PUTRAJAYA, April 10 ― Polling for the Rompin parliamentary seat in Pahang will be on May 5 while nominations is fixed for April 22, Elections Commission chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof announced today.

The by-election is called following the death of its elected representative Tan Sri Jamaluddin Jarjis, who was killed when the AS365N2 Dauphin helicopter he was travelling in to return home after attending the wedding reception of Nooryana Najwa and Daniyar in Pekan, Pahang, crashed at 4.45pm.

“I would like to say that the EC had already received a letter from the Dewan Rakyat Speaker on the unexpected vacancy of the Rompin seat due to the death of incumbent Tan Sri Jamaludin Jarjis… and as such, will have to hold a by-election,” Abdul Aziz told reporters here.

The 63-year-old was also PR1MA Malaysia Corporation chairman and was a former ambassador to the US in 2009.

In the last general election, the late Jamaluddin retained Rompin by beating former Wanita PAS chief Nuridah Mohd Salleh with a majority of 15,114 votes.

He had held Rompin seat for 23 years.

Based on the 2013 Electoral Roll there are 53,596 registered voters in the semi-urban seat with Malays forming 80 per cent of the electorate.

The Chinese only form 2 per cent of the roll while the rest are mixed.

The campaigning period for the Rompin by-election will be held two days ahead of the Permatang Pauh by-election, which could determine the future leader of the fragmented Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition pact.

This could be advantageous for the Barisan Nasional (BN) as its political foe would have to divide its limited resources to two front lines.

The outcomes of past polls have showed that the opposition pact tended to fare better when their strength is pooled in individual by-elections.

The Permatang Pauh seat was officially declared vacant on April 1 after its elected representative, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was disqualified following his sodomy conviction.

Anwar also retained the Permatang Pauh seat in the 2013 general election when he defeated BN’s Dr Mazlan Ismail by 11,721-vote majority.

The Penangite is currently serving a five-year jail term after the Federal Court upheld his sodomy conviction on February 10.