SHAH ALAM: Polling is officially closed for the first by-election held after the 14th General Election (GE14) in May.
Folks in Sungai Kandis cast their ballots today to elect a new assemblyman following the death of their representative Mat Shuhaimi Shafiei from PKR on July 2.
With PAS giving this by-election a miss, it is a battle between PKR's Mohd Zawawi Ahmad Mughni and Barisan Nasional's (BN) Datuk Lokman Noor Adam as well as independent candidate K. Murthy.
Voter turnout was rather low as it stood at 40% as at 3pm, according to the Election Commission (EC).
The low turnout prompted PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail to appeal to the voters in the Sungai Kandis state constituency to go out and vote to elect their representative.
On her Twitter account, Wan Azizah cited the 31% turnout at 1pm and said, "The weather forecast says it will rain in the afternoon. I appeal to voters to exercise their rights to vote immediately."
The by-election today involved 19 polling centres that opened at 8am with 789 EC personnel in place to monitor the election process.
“We have increased the number of voting channels from the 88 channels in GE14 to 109 channels for this by-election," EC deputy chairman Tan Sri Othman Mahmood previously informed.
In GE14, Mat Shuhaimi retained the seat (formerly known as Sri Muda) for the third term by polling 23,998 votes to beat Datuk Kamaruzzaman Johari of BN (11,518 votes), Mohd Yusof Abdullah of PAS (7,573) and Hanafiah Husin of Parti Rakyat Malaysia (76). Mat Shuhaimi secured a majority of 12,480 votes.
