PKR’s Penanti win no big deal, says Najib

(The Star) JEJU (South Korea): PKR’s win in the Penanti by-election cannot be used to gauge its popularity because the party was only challenged by independent candidates, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

He said it was also hardly an encouraging win as only less than half of the voters in the constituency cast their votes.

“It is not a victory to be proud of,” he told the Malaysian pressmen covering the Asean-South Korea Commemorative Summit here yesterday.

PKR’s Mansor Othman won the by-election by garnering 6,052 votes. Independents Nai-Kan Ari obtained 494 votes while Aminah Abdullah and Kamarul Ramizu obtained 392 and 56 votes respectively.

Only 7,101 or 46.15% of the 15,384 voters in the constituency cast their votes.

Najib said it was also not much of a victory for Mansor because he obtained less votes than his predecessor, former Penang Chief Minister 1 Mohammad Fairus Khairuddin.

In the general election last year, Mohammad Fairus won the seat by polling 7,346 votes, beating Barisan Nasional candidate Datuk Abdul Jalil Abdul Majid with a majority of 2,219 votes.

In Putrajaya, ROYCE CHEAH reported Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as saying the poor turnout was proof that Malaysians were fed-up with the manipulation of democracy.

Speaking to reporters after visiting the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency he said voters were now bored and realised that such elections were a waste of money.

“It shows that the voters do not like to be played with. The result also shows that PKR is not so great. Barisan Nasional’s strength is still there although we did not contest. It also shows that our decision was spot on,” he said.

Muhyiddin said that the Opposition also did not take the by-election platform to inform people of what they would do for the electorate. “Instead, they used it to criticise Barisan. I hope PKR takes the people’s poor turnout as a serious indication of people’s feeling,” he added.