PUTRAJAYA, July 5 — Polling day for the anticipated Kuala Besut by-election will fall on July 24 while nomination is set for July 12, the Election Commission (EC) announced today.
This means political parties will have 12 days to campaign in what is tipped to be a fiercely fought by-election in which defeat for the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition could see a hung Terengganu state assembly.
The Kuala Besut vote is also Malaysia’s first by-election since the contentious May 5 national polls.
The by-election was called following the death of Dr A. Rahman Mokhtar, BN’s state assemblyman for Kuala Besut, who died on June 26 from lung cancer.
In Election 2013, Dr Rahman had defeated PAS’s Napisah Ismail with a comfortable 2,434-vote majority.
EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Yusof said today there are 17,683 registered voters in the constituency while army votes total 1,134, a considerable number given the majority won by BN was just 50 per cent more.
The army camps are traditionally seen as BN “vote banks” but the idea has been challenged by accusations of vote rigging.
PAS leaders told The Malay Mail Online that the party is confident of winning the Malay-majority seat, arguing that it may have miscalculated by fielding a woman candidate in the general election since the rural seat houses a mostly conservative electorate.
More than 98 per cent of the voters in the constituency are Malays.
If PAS wins the by-election, Terengganu will have the first hung assembly in the nation’s history.
The Islamist party ruled Terengganu for one term from 1999 to 2004.
Both PAS and Umno have rejected the idea of a joint government in the event of a hung assembly.
Umno, however, is confident that it can retain the seat and is expected to focus all of its machinery on preserving its Election 2013 win to avoid a hung assembly.
The party’s number two and Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin will lead Umno’s war machine with the support former Terengganu Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh.
