To Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak's newly-elected Kanowit MP Aaron Dagang, the story of the 11th general election last Sunday is one of unforgettable blunders, possibly on the part of the Election Commission officials.

This forester-turned-politician who had served as political secretary to former energy, communications and multimedia minister Leo Moggie was given the ignominy which he didn't deserve of winning by the narrowest margin 306 votes among 22 of the 28 contesting candidates in Sarawak.

The media - radio, television and newspaper - all announced that Aaron had won after polling 3,175 votes against his sole challenger, independent Frederick Bunsu's 2,869 votes.

It was also reported that voter turnout was 6,146 out of the 18,181 registered voters or 33.8 per cent - said to be the lowest in the country's history.

Correction made a day later

The next day, the government's Information Department issued a short press statement to correct the mistake.

It said, Aaron, the BN candidate and Moggie's protege, had won by a 2,057-vote majority after polling 6,438 votes against his opponent's 4,381 votes, and that voter turnout was not 33.8 percent but 61.54 percent.

No explanation was given how the blunder occurred.

But this was enough not only to embarrass EC state officials and also angered Aaron supporters who were told by the candidate himself when counting had completed that he had won by a majority of more than 2,000 votes.

That majority, however, was less than half that of Moggie's majority of 5,308 votes in an even lower voter turnout at the last parliamentary elections.

"How on earth could such a thing have happened," PBDS deputy Youth chief Anthony Nais told malaysiakini .

"When I spoke to Aaron by phone after the counting was more or less over and votes had been tallied, he told me he had won by more than 2,000 votes."

There were suspicions among certain PBDS leaders and supporters about how such a mess up could have happened.

"It seems to be calculated move by some people out to embarrass the BN candidate who is aligned to the PBDS president Daniel Tajem faction," one of them told malaysiakini .

"I think there should be greater care in the future before radio and TV air election results and before the newspapers print them. Fortunately, the reported result had no material impact at all on the actual situation, that Aaron was in fact elected," he added.

Another case was the defeat of PAS spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat and PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang announced on the Internet, radio and TV when in fact they had won in their respective state seats.

This was a misreading of the ground situation after the voting trend appeared to be clearly going against PAS nationwide.

DAP returns to Bandar Kuching

In Sarawak, 27 of the 28 parliamentary seats went to the BN, with the DAP spoiling the perfect score when one of its five candidates, Chong Chieng Jen, won the predominantly-Chinese Bandar Kuching seat.

Chong, the state DAP secretary, who was among 12 of the party's candidates elected to parliament, secured a 2,041-vote majority in this surprise win against BN's Wee Kok Tiong from the Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) by polling 17,914 votes against his opponent's 15,873 votes.

That winning majority means a swing of more than 10,000 voters to the opposition because the last election in 1999 saw BN's Song Swee Guan winning by a comfortable margin of 8,398 votes.

In the last elections, observers had said Song's personal popularity had attracted a lot of votes from the young and middle-aged groups in a constituency that has swung like a pendulum since first direct elections were introduced in Sarawak in 1970.

Deputy chief minister and SUPP chairperson Dr George Chan, in accepting the result, said the choice of candidate was not an issue as Wee is the son of a well-known Chinese businessman, the late Wee Boon Pin, "but (because of ) factors yet to be determined".

He said the party would hold a post-mortem of the results.

In Kuching and Sibu, DAP candidates Wong Ho Leng (Sibu) and Robert Wong (Lanang) managed to reduce their opponents' majorities quite significantly.

Their campaign had centred on the two-decade-long leadership of Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, corruption and cronyism, and also on floods and electricity tariff in the state.

They said it was time to elect people who could speak without fear or favour, meaning that they should strengthen the opposition voice in Parliament.

Apparently, in Kuching the voters listened and acted, and in Sibu although they lost, the majority of the Chinese electorate nevertheless voted for DAP.