[ad_1]
KOTA KINABALU – Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s alliance won the Sabah state elections on Saturday (September 26), according to unofficial results.
In a boost to his leadership, his Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) alliance has won the minimum of 37 state assembly seats needed to form the next state government.
The state has a total of 73 electoral districts.
The victory could strengthen Tan Sri Muhyiddin’s attempt to defend his position as prime minister amid an attempt by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to form the next federal government.
Tan Sri Muhyiddin has said that instant national elections could be called soon if GRS wins in Sabah.
Malaysia’s general elections will only be held in 2023, but it has been widely speculated that it will be called in the coming months.
Sabah’s victory is a boost for the prime minister, after Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim on Wednesday (September 23) dropped a bombshell by saying he has majority support from federal parliamentarians to form the next government.
Anwar also claimed at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur that the Muhyiddin government, which came to power seven months ago, has “collapsed”.
Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin, secretary general of Perikatan Nasional (PN), Muhyiddin’s ruling coalition, said on Saturday that based on the unofficial results in Sabah, GRS “will take over the state.”
The victory meant that GRS, which consists of PN, Barisan Nasional (BN), Parti Bersatu Sabah and several other Sabah-based parties, has wrested state government from a rival alliance led by Parti Warisan Sabah.
The unofficial results showed that the Warisan alliance won 20 seats, and other factions won another three districts.
GRS managed to emerge victorious despite the fact that its various members competed with each other in 17 of the 73 districts.
But it was not clear who will become the prime minister of GRS, as both the PN and BN had promoted their own candidates for the position during the 14-day campaign.
Voter turnout was just over 60 percent of the nearly 1.1 million voters in Malaysia’s second-largest state after Sarawak.
The lower turnout was due to concerns of an increase in Covid-19 cases in Sabah in recent weeks. The state now has 730 active cases of Covid-19.
In 2018, voter turnout was 77 percent.
[ad_2]
