ALOR SETAR, MALAYSIA — After 14 days of campaign, Malaysia Election Commission (EC) on yesterday (7 Dec) had officially announced that Datuk Azman Nasrudin won Padang Serai parliamentary seat for Perikatan National (PN), with a 16,206 majority of votes.
This marked the conclusion for all 222 parliamentary seats contested in Malaysia’s 15th General Election (GE15), with PN coalition led by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin garnering one more seat, totalling 74 MPs from his coalition to form the biggest opposition in the country’s parliament.
50-year-old Azman Nasrudin defeated Pakatan Harapan candidate Mohamad Sofee Razak with 51,637 votes. The poll for Padang Serai was postponed as the previous PH candidate M Karupaiya died after collapsing while campaigning.
But the PN coalition lost in another state seat in Pahang after Barisan National(BN) candidate Datuk Seri Mohd Johari Hussain managed to defend the seat with 8080 votes, winning with a slim majority of 573.
PN component parties comprise BERSATU (Malaysian United Indigenous Party), PAS (Malaysian Islamic Party), GERAKAN (Malaysian People’s Movement Party), Sabah- based parties : SAPP (Sabah Progressive Party) and STAR (Homeland Solidarity Party).
Muhyiddin: result shows people do not trust PH-BN pact
Muhyiddin Yassin, chairman for PN and BERSATU, commented in his recent Facebook post that the result shows that people are “not excited” about the PH-BN pact to form a unity government.
“BN’s majority declined by almost half in Tioman; and PN’s majority in Padang Serai was double the majority won by Pakatan in GE14. This is proof that the people do not trust the combination of PH and BN, ” Muhyiddin claimed.
“People are not confident in the ability of this coalition government to govern the country. Many supporters of these two coalitions have switched to supporting Perikatan, as they were disappointed with the deception of PH and BN during the GE15.”
With support from BN and political coalitions from Sabah and Sarawak, the unity government led by PH chairman Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had achieved a two-thirds majority in the Parliament. Anwar was sworn in as Malaysia’s 10th Prime Minister on 24 November.
Muhyiddin further labelled the unity government formed by PH and BN as “the biggest electoral fraud ever”, and the voters in Padang Serai and Tioman have given a clear signal that they disapprove of the actions of these two coalitions.
Two weeks ago, Malaysia went through five days of a hung parliament, as none of the major political coalitions managed to achieve simple majority support.
The Malaysia King had initially summoned both Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and Muhyiddin to solve the hung parliament conundrum where he expressed his desire to form a strong and inclusive government that could focus on solving Malaysians’ pressing issues.
However, Muhyiddin refused to work with PH, and insisted his coalition had enough seats to form government despite 10 BN MPs and GPS from Sarawak having withdrawn their support to him.
