The Pengkalan Pasir by-election was held on 6 December 2005 in the Pengkalan Pasir state assembly constituency of the PAS-governed state of Kelantan, Malaysia. Nominations were held on 27 November 2005, and the election was contested by Hanifa Ahmad of Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), Hanafi Mamat of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, and Ibrahim Ali, an independent candidate. The by-election was necessitated after the death of the incumbent, Wan Abdul Aziz Wan Jaafar from PAS, on 31 October because of cancer.[1][2] Wan Abdul Aziz defeated Hanafi by 55 votes in the 2004 general election. In 2005, there are 18,411 eligible voters and 195 registered postal voters; 94.8% Malay and 5.2% Chinese in Pengkalan Pasir.[3]
The eventual winner was Hanafi, who was initially announced to have won with a majority of 129 votes. This thin margin entitled Hanifa to a recount the following day, but the outcome was unaltered — Hanafi won 7,422 votes, defeating Hanifa, who polled 7,288 votes, by a margin of 134 votes. Ibrahim won 415 votes, losing his deposit. The outcome of the election has left the Kelantan state government in a precarious position, as a single defecting PAS member of the state assembly would result in Barisan Nasional forming the state government. As a result, the by-election campaign was fraught with many offers to assemblymen on both sides of gifts or government positions in return for defecting. There were also allegations of phantom voters from PAS, with several buses carrying suspected phantom voters being stopped by PAS supporters on election day.
Background
Hanafi Mamat was born in Kg Padang Tokla Pasir Mas Kelantan. He attended Sultan Ibrahim Primary School till 1966 and proceeded to Sultan Ibrahim Secondary School in 1967. After graduating from University of East London (formerly known North East London Polytechnic) he joined the Survey and Mapping Department Malaysia serving as a district surveyor and assistant director in the states of Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan. He resigned from government service in 1990 to contest for the Pasir Mas Parliamentary seat for Barisan Nasional (BN) but lost. Then, he was UMNO youth division chief and the UMNO Youth Malaysia EXCO.
In the 2004 general election, Barisan Nasional (BN) won 21 out of 45 seats in the Kelantan state assembly, a major setback for PAS, whose stronghold had always been Kelantan. PAS now governed the state with a thin three-seat majority in the state assembly. Wan Abdul Aziz's passing reduced that majority to two, and if BN wins the seat, PAS will govern by a one-seat majority.[4][5]
However, BN's history of by-elections in Kelantan has not been favourable — of the 15 by-elections held there, BN has won only once. Out of the 11 elections held for the Pengkalan Pasir (formerly known as Bandar Pasir Mas) seat, BN won thrice — in the 1978, 1982 and 1986 general elections. In the 2004 general election, Wan Abdul Aziz defeated Hanafi by 55 votes, making the seat one of the most contested in the nation.
Before nominations commenced, the UMNO-owned New Straits Times newspaper noted that both parties had already eagerly begun campaigning, with banners and posters erected. Although this is technically illegal, neither side has bothered to condemn this practice. The only period of time where it is legal to campaign is between nomination day and polling day — slightly more than a week.
Both parties selected their candidates internally as is the norm, without primary elections, with Prime MinisterAbdullah Ahmad Badawi of UMNO reportedly having decided on the BN candidate. The candidates' identities were announced on the eve of nomination day. However, it was not known if Ibrahim Ali would contest the seat, as although he had expressed interest, none of the major newspapers in Malaysia (most of which are owned by parties in BN) confirmed rumours that he would run. Ibrahim was formerly a Member of Parliament for the seat of Pasir Mas in Kelantan, and unsuccessfully ran for the seat in the 2004 general election. He was also a UMNO division chief before leaving the party.
Hanifa was formerly the Group Chief Executive of the Kelantan State Economic Development Corporation and is currently a member of the PAS Pasir Mas division committee, while Hanafi is the Vice President of the Malaysian Association of Authorised Land Surveyors and the UMNO Pasir Mas deputy division chief.
Due to the wafer-thin majority of PAS in the state assembly, there was much jockeying among BN, UMNO specifically, to see if a majority could be gained in the state assembly, whether by turning PAS assemblymen to the BN side or by forcing the dissolution of the assembly and holding fresh elections. On 13 November, BN Kelantan chairman Annuar Musa announced his intent to get Kelantan Chief Minister Nik Aziz Nik Mat of PAS to seek royal consent to dissolve the state assembly if PAS lost so they could receive a clear mandate from the voters. PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang then said the party would not allow UMNO or BN to dictate terms to it.
Kelantan state executive councillor Husam Musa then challenged all 21 BN assemblymen to resign to allow fresh elections to be held. Annuar took Husam up on his challenge, saying they would resign on 1 December to pave the way for snap elections. Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Razak, then weighed in, saying all 44 assemblymen should resign, and not just the 21 from BN. Nik Aziz said he would "never entertain" such a request. Later the Election Commission deputy chairman Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said anyone who resigned would waive their rights to run in an election for the next five years unless the sultan of Kelantan dissolved the assembly. Finally, Prime Minister Abdullah told both sides to stop calling for each other's resignation, as the Election Commission had made it clear that this would not allow the incumbents to contest.
Both sides also attempted to woo assemblymen from the other party, with UMNO offering high-ranking posts in the state government to the first assemblymen to defect from PAS. PAS reciprocated this with a similar offer.
The election is widely viewed as a referendum on the policies of both parties. Conservative leaders in PAS, which has the avowed goal of establishing Malaysia as an Islamic theocracy, were rejected in favour of more liberal ones in the recent party elections, while political pundits see the election as a possible bellwether on the people's views of Abdullah's and BN's policies. It is also viewed as an indicator of how people receive ousted Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, formerly of UMNO but now an advisor of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and actively campaigning for PAS.
Nominations
As expected, Hanafi, Hanifa and Ibrahim all submitted their nominations in the appropriate manner between 9 and 10am on nomination day, 27 November. Nominations closed at 10am. However, to the surprise of bystanders, two people later appeared to file their nomination papers and run as independent candidates.
Mohamad Suji @ Ahmad Awang, a former religious teacher, was the first to file his papers, but had them rejected by the Election Commission for paying the nomination fee of RM5,000 with a crossed cheque instead of cash or a bank draft. The second attempted independent candidate was Fauziah Gani, a businesswoman, who also had her papers rejected for paying with a cheque.
After nominations closed, PAS filed an objection with the Election Commission, arguing that Hanafi was forbidden to run under the Universities and University Colleges Act 1975; Hanafi is a PhD candidate at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), and the act forbids all undergraduate and post-graduate students from being involved in any political activities whatsoever. However, the Electoral Commission refused to entertain the objection. The Election Commission's chairman, Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, said, "That objection is too trivial, democracy must be maintained... anyone who is qualified may run."
After nominations closed, Hanafi, Hanifa and Ibrahim appeared together holding hands to greet their supporters. Ibrahim requested that "BN and PAS should be gentlemen and refrain from using the Federal and State Government machinery to campaign for them," while Hanifa stated "The three-cornered fight will benefit us." Hanafi expressed confidence that the 18,411 voters in the constituency would choose BN over PAS, who had expressed similar worries as Ibrahim about the Federal Government being used to campaign for BN.
Election day
On the morning of election day before the polls opened, PAS supporters held up buses they suspected of ferrying phantom voters to polling stations. The buses were diverted to a police station, where the identities of their passengers were ascertained. It was later announced that they were legitimate voters but registered in other constituencies, and had been brought in by UMNO for some last-minute campaigning.
Both UMNO and PAS organised transportation for voters, with UMNO going as far as to pay for the expenses of bringing home out-of-state voters, including those living overseas. Polls opened at 9am and closed at 5pm, and in the evening Hanafi was declared the victor. However, as his margin of victory, 129 votes with 7,419 votes to Hanifa's 7,290, was smaller than 2%, election rules gave PAS the right to demand a recount the following day. The recount was held at 10am, and confirmed the result; however, Hanafi's margin was increased to 139, with the recount giving him 7,422 votes to Hanifa's 7,288. The turnout for the election was 83.04%, higher than the 77.6% seen in the previous year's general election.
The election result was seen as crushing for Ibrahim's political career, and also possibly for Anwar's as well. Anwar had lent heavy support to PAS, despite his proclaimed misgivings about its goal of establishing Malaysia as an Islamic state. PAS, which had been expecting the election to act as a bellwether on how the electorate would respond to its internal reforms, was seen by analysts as now having trouble evaluating its new policies due to the election's indeterminate results.
Although both Anwar and Ibrahim had large audiences at speeches (ceramah) they held, where they criticised, among others, Abdullah's Islam Hadhari and the recent lock-up detainee abuse scandal, on polling day, the voters appeared to desert PAS and Ibrahim. Some suggested this could be due to most of the attendees at the speeches not being voters in the constituency, while others argued that voters were swayed by BN's promises of development.[6]
PAS declared BN had won by using illegal tactics, and declared it would file a report with the Election Commission (EC). Some cynical members of the independent media argued that the postal ballots had been stuffed, and asked how there could be 212 postal voters when there were only 195 registered postal voters, suggesting BN had won using underhanded tactics.
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), a key member of the Barisan Nasional, claimed they had succeeded at winning the Chinese vote in the constituency, with supposedly 95% of the 800 Chinese voters there voting for BN. "We even persuaded a few Chinese voters who were planning to go on holiday to China to postpone their trip ... to vote on Tuesday," said one MCA official. He also said 80 of 130 Chinese voters living outside the constituency returned to cast their votes.[7]
Election results
Kelantan state by-election, 6 December 2005:Pengkalan Pasir The by-election was called due to the death of incumbent, Wan Abdul Aziz Wan Jaafar.
The National Front, officially Barisan Nasional (BN), is a political coalition of Malaysia that was founded in 1974 as a coalition of centre-right and right-wing political parties to succeed the Alliance Party. It is the third largest political coalition with 30 seats in the Dewan Rakyat after Pakatan Harapan (PH) with 82 seats and Perikatan Nasional (PN) with 74 seats.
The Malaysian Islamic Party, also known as the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, is an Islamist political party in Malaysia. Ideologically focused on Islamic fundamentalism. PAS's electoral base is largely centred around Peninsular Malaysia's rural northern and east coast regions particularly the states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Perlis, and Kedah. They also gained significant support in the rural areas of Perak and Pahang in the last 2022 general election and the 2023 state elections; dubbed as the "Green Wave".
The People's Justice Party, is a reformist political party in Malaysia formed on 3 August 2003 through a merger of the party's predecessor, the National Justice Party, with the socialist Malaysian People's Party. The party's predecessor was founded by Wan Azizah Wan Ismail during the height of the Reformasi movement on 4 April 1999 after the arrest of her husband, former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. At the 2022 Malaysian general election, the PH coalition which the PKR was part of was returned to power again, albeit without a majority, leading it to form a unity government with political rivals. The party is one of main partners of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) ruling coalition in Malaysia.
The Batu Talam by-election was held on 28 January 2007. The seat of Batu Talam in the state assembly of Pahang, Malaysia, fell vacant after the death of the incumbent, Tengku Paris Tengku Razlan of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the leading party of the ruling Barisan Nasional. Nominations were held on 16 January, with two candidates filing to contest — Abdul Aziz Mat Kiram of UMNO, and independent candidate Ng Chee Pang.
General elections were held in Malaysia on Saturday, 8 March 2008. Voting took place in all 222 parliamentary constituencies of Malaysia, each electing one Member of Parliament to the Dewan Rakyat, the dominant house of Parliament. State elections also took place in 505 state constituencies in 12 of the 13 states on the same day.
Kamarudin bin Jaffar is a Malaysian politician who served as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for the second term in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under former Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and former Minister Saifuddin Abdullah from August 2021 to the collapse of the BN administration in November 2022 and the first term in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration under former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and former Minister Hishammudin Hussein from March 2020 to the collapse of the PN administration in August 2021, Member of Parliament (MP) for Bandar Tun Razak from May 2018 to November 2022, Deputy Minister of Transport in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and former Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook from July 2018 to the collapse of the PH administration in February 2020 and MP for Tumpat from November 1999 to May 2018. He is a member of the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU), a component party of the PN coalition and was a member of the People's Justice Party (PKR), a component party of the PH coalition, Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), a former component party of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Alternatif (BA) coalitions and United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.
The 1977 Kelantan Emergency took place in the state of Kelantan in Malaysia. The state of emergency was declared by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Sultan Yahya Petra who was also Sultan of Kelantan at the time on 8 November 1977 upon the request of the federal government following a political impasse and street violence in Kelantan. This was the fifth declaration of emergency in Malaya and Malaysia after the 1948–1960 Malayan Emergency, the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, the 1966 Sarawak constitutional crisis and the 13 May Incident.
General elections were held in Malaysia on Wednesday, 9 May 2018. At stake were all 222 seats in the Dewan Rakyat, the lower house of parliament. The 13th Parliament was dissolved by Prime Minister Najib Razak on 7 April 2018. It would have been automatically dissolved on 24 June 2018, five years after the first meeting of the first session of the 13th Parliament of Malaysia on 24 June 2013.
This is a list of the members of the Dewan Rakyat of the 13th Parliament of Malaysia. The opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat that contested the general elections in 2013 was dissolved after series of disagreements between two main parties, Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). A new opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan was formed by the DAP, People's Justice Party (PKR) and newly formed party National Trust Party (AMANAH), consisting of ex-PAS members. Several ex-UMNO members have also formed their own party Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU) and have signed an electoral pact with Pakatan Harapan to contest the future general election and ensure straight fights against Barisan Nasional. On 20 March 2017 BERSATU officially became a member of Pakatan Harapan.
A by-election was held for the Kelantan State Assembly seat of Pengkalan Kubor on 25 September 2014 following the nomination day on 13 September 2014. The seat fell vacant after the death of the incumbent three-term assemblyman, Noor Zahidi Omar from liver cancer in Guangzhou, China on 20 August 2014. Zahidi was an assemblyman from the United Malays National Organisation, a component party of the opposition Barisan Nasional coalition. In the 2013 general election, he defeated Pakatan Rakyat (PKR) candidate Saharun Ibrahim and an independent candidate by 1,736 votes.
A by-election was held for the Kelantan State Assembly seat of Chempaka on 22 March 2015 following the nomination day on 10 March 2015. The seat fell vacant after the death of the incumbent five-term assemblyman and former Menteri Besar of Kelantan, Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat from prostate cancer in Kubang Kerian, Kelantan on 12 February 2015. Niz Aziz was a member of PAS, part of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition. Nik Abdul Aziz had retained the seat in the 13th General Election in 2013 by beating Wan Razman Wan Abd Razak of the Barisan Nasional with a majority of 6,500 votes.
The 14th Kelantan State election was held on 9 May 2018, concurrently with the 2018 Malaysian general election. The previous state election was held on 5 May 2013. The state assemblymen is elected to 5 years term each.
General elections were held in Malaysia on Saturday, 19 November 2022. The prospect of snap elections had been considered high due to the political crisis that had been ongoing since 2020; political instability caused by coalition or party switching among members of Parliament, combined with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to the resignation of two prime ministers and the collapse of each of their respective coalition governments since the 2018 general elections.
The National Concord was a Malaysian political coalition that was formed between the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) against the then-ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition which had come into power after the 2018 Malaysian general election (GE14). The political cooperation between the two largest Malay/Muslim-based parties was officialised with the signing of the Piagam Muafakat Nasional. The five-point charter was signed by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang and UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in the Himpunan Penyatuan Ummah held at Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC), Kuala Lumpur on 14 September 2019. Its main aim is to unite the Malay/Muslim community or Ummah for electoral purposes.
Nik Mohamad Abduh bin Nik Abdul Aziz is a Malaysian politician who has served as a Senator since September 2023. He was chairman of the South Kelantan Development Authority (KESEDAR) from May 2020 to June 2023 and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bachok from May 2018 to November 2022 and for Pasir Mas from May 2013 to May 2018. He is a member of the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), a component party of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) and formerly Gagasan Sejahtera (GS) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalitions. He is the son of Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, the former Menteri Besar of Kelantan and former spiritual leader of PAS. He was the youth chief of PAS from June 2015 to April 2017.
The 2021 Malacca state election, formally the 15th Malacca state election, took place on 20 November 2021. This election was to elect 28 members of the 15th Malacca State Legislative Assembly. The previous assembly was dissolved on 4 October 2021.
The 15th Kelantan state election were held on 12 August 2023 to elect the State Assembly members of the 15th Kelantan State Legislative Assembly, the legislature of the Malaysian state of Kelantan.
Green Wave, also known as Green Tsunami, is a political phenomenon that has taken place in Malaysia since the 2022 Malaysian general election. This political phenomenon involves Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and its ultraconservative voters, who mainly originate from the northeastern and northwestern parts of Peninsular Malaysia. Ideologically, the phenomenon mostly concerns a far-right, authoritarian and ultranationalist movement that espouses increased Malay-Muslim hegemony in Malaysian politics as well as further intimidation and marginalisation of Malaysia's minority groups and religions.
The 2024 Nenggiri by-election was held on 17 August 2024 for the Kelantan State Legislative Assembly seat of Nenggiri. The by-election was called following the disqualification of the incumbent, Mohd Azizi Abu Naim, on 19 June 2024 due to his support for the Anwar Ibrahim government. Mohd Azizi had served as a Member of the Kelantan State Legislative Assembly for Nenggiri since 2023, and also as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gua Musang.
References
Abdullah, Saiful Azhar (28 November 2005). "Stage set for showdown". New Straits Times, p.5.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
