BN keeps Tenang with 3,707 majority
LABIS, Jan 30 — Barisan Nasional’s (BN) retained the Tenang seat today with a 3,707 vote majority, short of the 5,000 majority the ruling coalition had expected from the Umno stronghold. BN’s Azahar Ibrahim polled 6,699 votes against PAS’s Normala Sudirman, who took 2,992 votes from the 12 polling districts.
A total of 9,833 voters or 67 per cent of the 14,753 electorate turned up to cast their ballots despite the rain.
The result was announced by Tenang election officer Md Asri Amir at 10.05pm, at the tallying centre in the Labis Municipal hall.
The announcement had been pushed back from its original 8pm schedule after several ballot boxes arrived late at the counting centre due to delays caused by the floods in the area.
Also present when the outcome was announced tonight were Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Johor Mentri Besar and BN’s election director Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman, and Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor.
PAS vice-president Datuk Mahfuz Omar had also sent out a congratulatory message to Azahar via Twitter.
Shortly before polling closed, the EC had sent out boats to ferry voters to four polling centres as heavy rains flooded several areas in the constituency.Earlier today, Muhyiddin had expressed concern that rainy weather would affect turnout in the Tenang by-election and may result in Barisan Nasional (BN) winning with lower majority than expected.
BN had initially targeted a victory margin of 5,000 votes. It retained Tenang in 2008 by 2,491 votes, half the majority obtained in 2004.
The Tenang seat fell vacant when incumbent Sulaiman died last December 17 due to complications with diabetes. Source: The Malaysian Insider 31/1/2011
No comments:
Post a Comment