Weekday by-election helped BN, says Kit Siang

BN would not have obtained its slim increase in majority, or even suffered a deficit, in the Kuala Besut by-election yesterday had it been held on a weekend, said DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang.

Responding to Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s claim that BN had failed to achieve its 4,000-vote majority target due to “overconfidence” of its supporters, Lim said the opposite could be true.

“...the opposite is more likely to be the case, as the lower turnout is the result of the polling day being fixed on a working day, causing many outstation voters not returning to cast their votes.

“If voter turn-out in the by-election had been as high as during the general election, with the majority of those who did not return to Kuala Besut to vote in the by-election voting for the PAS candidate, the Umno/BN majority in the by-election  is likely to be lower than the 2,434-vote majority in the  recent general election,” he said in a statement today.

In the lead up to the by-election, Umno had boasted that it would double its majority from the last general election in what is supposed to be its stronghold.

However, the results yesterday saw the ruling party increase its majority only by 158 votes from the 2,434-vote majority in the 13th general election.

Lim said despite the weekday election resulting in 1,193 less voters than during the May 5 polls, PAS nevertheless “respectable result ... as nobody really expects the Umno/BN candidate to lose in their stronghold”.

The real losers, he said, was Umno as they had failed to reach their target despite the huge amount of handouts to the electorate during campaigning.

“Such an outcome with a smaller majority, despite victory still going to the Umno/BN candidate, would have been seen as a setback for Umno/BN especially after goodies of some  RM500 million have rained down  the constituency and the voters during the by-election by both the federal and state governments – turning the Kuala Besut by-election into one of the most expensive ‘buy-elections’ in history,” he quipped.