Blue wave sweeps over Batu Sapi and Galas

FULL REPORT KUALA LUMPUR: Barisan Nasional has scored a double victory in the Batu Sapi and Galas by-elections, giving Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's administration a resounding stamp of approval and sending the Anwar Ibrahim-led opposition back to the drawing board.

For the Batu Sapi parliamentary seat in Sabah, BN candidate Linda Tsen won with a landslide victory, chalking up a margin of 6,359 votes over her nearest rival, PKR's Ansari Andullah.

Her majority was even greater than her late husband Edmund Chong's in 2008 when he got 3,708-vote majority. The latter's death in a traffic accident had paved the way for the by-election.

Tsen garnered 9,773 votes while Ansari got 3,414. The other contender in the three-way tussle, SAPP president Yong Teck Lee came in a disappointing third with 2,031 votes despite initial projections that the former chief minister would win the seat.


Observers noted that while Tsen managed to secure support from both the Malay/Bumiputera and Chinese voters, Yong had lost out to Ansari on the Malay/Bumiputera votes.

Despite his defeat, Ansari can take some comfort in the fact that he managed to rope in more votes than the “taiko” Yong despite being written off by observers.

The BN victory gives embattled Chief Minister Musa Aman some respite and on the surface, blunts the political significance of his detractors and the opposition.

Batu Sapi has 25,582 voters, of whom 1,535 are postal voters. The Election Commission revealed that the voter turnout for the contest was 61%.

Blue wave sweeps Galas too
 
In the peninsula, the BN wave swept across the Galas political landscape in Kelantan, drowning PAS in its wake.
The ruling coalition's candidate Abdul Aziz Yusoff snatched the former PAS state seat with a majority of 1,190 votes.

Abdul Aziz garnered 5,324 votes while his PAS rival Dr Zulkefli Mohamad got 4,134 votes, with the voter turnout being recorded at 83%.

The results also indicate that the Chinese voters have backed BN after ditching the national coalition in 2008.

The Galas by-election was called following the death of PAS assemblyman Che Hashim Che Sulaiman, who won the seat with 646-vote margin in the 2008 general election.

Pundits predicted that the double victory could prompt Najib to call for a snap general election.
The ruling coalition appears to be on track to redeem itself following its worst ever performance in the last general election, which saw it lose, for the first time in history, two-thirds majority in Parliament and several states.