Amanah and PKR secure one seat each in Johor polls

SHAH ALAM - Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) defended only one out of the 19 seats it contested in the 16th Johor state election, retaining the Simpang Jeram state constituency.

Its candidate, Nazri Abd Rahman, won in a four-cornered fight according to unofficial results as of 10pm.

Nazri secured a slim majority of 180 votes to defeat his challengers, Azman Ismail representing Barisan Nasional (BN), Ainie Haziqah Shafii from the Malaysian Democratic Alliance Party (Muda), and Arshed Yahya from Perikatan Nasional-Pas. He received 11,830 votes against Azman (11,650), Arshed (3,789), and Ainie Haziqah (1,573).

However, this result marks a sharp contrast to the 2022 Johor state election when the late Datuk Seri Salahuddin Ayub contested the seat. At that time, Amanah won comfortably with a majority of 2,399 votes, indicating a significant drop of about 90 per cent in the majority.

Meanwhile, Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) contributed one seat through its Puteri Wangsa candidate, Dr Maszlee Malik. He secured 41,694 votes to brush aside his challengers from BN, Teow Chia Ling (35,956); Muda, Rashifa Al-Junied (5,821); Bersama, Nicholas Paul Vincent (2,389); and Independent candidate Wang Wee Szoang (238).

The remaining six seats were won by DAP, bringing the total haul for the PH coalition to eight seats in the 16th Johor polls.

The voting process for the 16th Johor state election officially ended after all 1,076 polling centres across the state closed at 6pm.

Having opened as early as 8pm the closing of the polling stations was carried out in stages, with the Pulau Besar Community Hall under the Tenggaroh constituency being the earliest location to close at 11am.

As of 5pm, 67.44 per cent or more than 1.8 million people out of the total 2.6 million ordinary voters had cast their ballots.