PENANG”s Pakatan Harapan (PH) caretaker chief minister Chow Kon Yeow has taken a massive lead over his Perikatan Nasional (PN) opponent in the contest for the Padang Kota state seat, leading with 8,261votes or 54.5% of the total votes.
The PN candidate from Gerakan H’ng Khoon Leng garnered 1,145 or 7.6% of votes at the time of writing.
Despite this, Chow who is also the Penang DSP chairman has declared that the PH-Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition is almost certain to form the Penang State Government after leading with a comfortable 29 seats based on an unofficial count as of 8pm tonight.
The coalition needs 21 seats out of a total of 40 state assembly seats to form a state government with a simple majority.
Although the DAP-rule Penang had some internal tussles with some incumbent state assemblymen who were not selected to contest in the state elections, Chow who is the party’s Penang chairman looks set to retain his post should PH emerge victorious in the state poll.
At the time of writing, the earlier prospect of a ‘clean sweep’ by the PH-BN coalition som faded away with the opposition Perikatan Nasional (PN) springing some surprise to win 11 state seats, mostly at the ‘Malay heartland’ in mainland Penang via PAS and Beersatu.
Polling process in Penang was quite smooth if not for two untoward incidents.
Incumbent Bagan Dalam state assemblyman Satees Muniandy who is contesting the Penang state poll as an independent candidate has lodged a police report claiming he was heckled and threatened by Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidate Kumaran Krishnan and a few of the latter’s friends.
On the other hand, a ballot box in a polling station in Paya Terubong was found to be unsealed, thus prompting vote casting for that stream to be halted.
A total of 177 ballot papers were already cast into the box when Perikatan Nasional (PN) candidate Ooi Ghee Oon discovered the unsealed ballot box in SK Seri Relau.
Sin Chew Daily reported that Ooi declared he would not recognise any of the ballots in that box as valid votes and asked for Election Commission (EC) to suspend voting for that stream which was to have 719 voters.
In the Malay majority Bayan Lepas, Penang’s PN chairman Datuk Dr Dominic Lau Hoe Chai was defeated by PH candidate from Amanah Azrul Mahathir Aziz with a majority of 1,889 votes despite the constituency being regarded as a PAS stronghold.
Gerakan found itself once again been totally rejected by Chinese voters in Penang after all 19 of the party’s candidates lost in the state election were defeated by the PH-BN opponent. – Aug 12, 2023
