EC: Election petition is a right

HULU SELANGOR: Anyone involved in the Kuala Kubu Baharu (KKB) by-election is free to file an election petition, said the Election Commission (EC) after Perikatan Nasional announced that it would challenge the poll’s results should its rival Pakatan Harapan win.

“It’s up to the parties themselves. The EC will accept the petition and facilitate the legal process,” EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Ghani Salleh told reporters here yesterday.

Perikatan had announced on May 6 that it would file the petition as it claimed to have evidence that its rival, which is part of the federal and state administrations, had abused government resources in their campaign for KKB.

Pakatan has refuted these allegations, with its candidate, Pang Sock Tao, saying that the coalition has followed all election laws while campaigning in the by-election.

“We have campaigned respectfully and followed the rules. The Opposition can say what they want, but we have campaigned appropriately,” Pang told reporters yesterday.

In announcing their petition, Perikatan leader Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan pointed to the Kuala Terengganu and Kemaman cases as providing possible precedents.

Takiyuddin, who is also PAS secretary-general, claimed the party had gathered substantial evidence of election offences during campaigning.

Last year, the Election Court nullified the victories in two parliamentary seats – Kuala Terengganu and Kemaman – after two separate petitions successfully proved that corruption and vote-buying had occurred when the seats were contested in the 15th General Election (GE15) in 2022.

The two MPs who had won the seats were told to vacate their posts and by-elections were held.

Allegations of impropriety during the KKB by-election were first made when Housing and Local Government Minister Nga Kor Ming announced over RM5mil worth of infrastructure projects for the Hulu Selangor district, of which KKB is a part, on April 18, before the official campaigning period.

Among others, the funds would be used to upgrade food stalls and public toilets, and resurface roads in Kuala Kubu Baru town.

When asked yesterday about allegations surrounding Nga, Abdul Ghani said he would leave it to the commission’s next chairman on whether to call the minister in, as his tenure ends tomorrow.

Abdul Ghani added that so far, there was only one case of the Election Offences Act being breached in KKB, in which a man was sentenced to a month’s jail and fined RM3,000 by the Magistrate’s Court for displaying a portrait of His Majesty Sultan Ibrahim, King of Malaysia, during the campaign period.