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KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian King Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah accepted an emergency declaration in the Sabah parliamentary constituency of Batu Sapi on Wednesday (November 18), to postpone the by-elections scheduled for next month and prevent a fourth wave of coronavirus. pandemic.
A new date will be set for the by-elections, which were to be held on December 5.
“His Royal Majesty has accepted the emergency proclamation for P185 Batu Sapi, Sabah, as a proactive step to curb the Covid-19 pandemic,” Royal Household Comptroller Ahmad Fadil Shamsuddin said in a statement.
The announcement was made after the king met for an hour with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to discuss the issue.
The king was briefed on the emergency proposal by the director general of health, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, the chief secretary of the government, Zuki Ali, the attorney general Idris Harun and the president of the Electoral Commission, Abdul Ghani Salleh, said Datuk Indera Ahmad Fadil.
The king said it was appropriate for an emergency to be declared to delay the Batu Sapi by-elections, as otherwise more than 3,000 people would travel from Peninsular Malaysia and Sarawak to vote in Sabah.
Sultan Abdullah also pointed out that state elections in Sabah on September 26 had led to a rise in cases to triple digits, after falling to single digits previously.
On October 25, the King had rejected a proposal by Tan Sri Muhyiddin to declare a national emergency, a plan apparently intended to address the Covid-19 pandemic. Critics, however, claimed that he was using it as an excuse to stay in power and that he no longer had the support of the majority in Parliament.
Later on Wednesday, Muhyiddin said in a special speech on the emergency declaration that no curfew or military regime would be applied in the Batu Sapi constituency, and that economic and social activities could continue, subject to the protocols of health under the current Conditional Movement Control. Order for all Sabah.
He promised that once the pandemic was over, by-elections would take place.
The Batu Sapi parliamentary district lost its representative when 60-year-old MP Liew Vui Keong, a former law minister, died on October 2.
Apart from Batu Sapi, two other seats have been vacated in recent days with the death of two lawmakers.
Umno MP Hasbullah Osman, who was the federal legislator for the Gerik electoral district in Perak, died on Monday of a heart attack. He was 63 years old.
On Tuesday, state legislator Manis Muka Mohd Darah, 65, of Parti Warisan Sabah died. She represented the Bugaya state headquarters.
Under Malaysian law, by-elections must be held within 60 days, once the Parliament or state assembly has been informed of a vacancy.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin, in his speech on television and on social media platforms, said that the cabinet had discussed postponing the Batu Sapi by-elections at its meeting last Friday and took into account the spread of Covid-19 in Sabah after state elections.
He said that on September 12, nomination day for the Sabah elections, there were 808 cumulative cases in Sabah, but this nearly doubled to 1,547 cases on election day on September 26.
“The Covid-19 situation in Sabah worsened when a spike occurred in the four weeks after voting day. On October 24, Sabah recorded 11,285 cumulative cases and became the first state in Malaysia to record more than 10,000 cases. .
“Today, Sabah still has the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia, with 24,269 cases and 181 deaths,” he said, attributing the rampant spread to poor enforcement of security measures.
He added that fears among poll workers about possible exposure to the virus led the Electoral Commission to appoint only 143 workers, just 17.1 percent of the number needed for by-elections.
The need for poll workers to travel and pass through many districts, the potential threat to public health, and the risk to the 22.3 percent of voters who are older and therefore vulnerable to the disease, were some of the factors that led to the decision, he said.
According to data from the Electoral Commission, there are 32,962 voters in Batu Sapi, of which 3,170 live outside the electoral district, including in Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia.
There are also an estimated 16,000 voters with incomplete addresses, which would make voting by mail difficult to implement.
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