KOTA BHARU, Feb 26 – The High Court here today quashed an election petition filed by a representative of Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, thus confirming the victory of PAS-Bersatu’s Datuk Mohd Azizi Abu Naim in the Gua Musang parliamentary seat in the 15th general election (GE15).
Judge Datuk Roslan Abu Bakar ordered the petitioner, Mohd Azmi Mahmood, to pay costs of RM25,000.
In his judgment, Justice Roslan said the court accepted the three issues in the preliminary objection raised by Mohd Azizi as the respondent to the election petition.
He said the date the petition was filed was outside the permitted time-frame of 28 days according to the Election Offences Act 1954, and the appointment of the petitioner’s lawyers was not in accordance with the provisions of the same law.
“This third issue is that the petitioner failed to provide details on his bribery allegation like complete information on the agent of the bribe giver, causing the petition to be defective and invalid,” he said.
At the proceedings, the petitioner was represented by lawyers Datuk Abu Bakar Isa Rahmat, Mohamed Baharuddin Mohamed Ariff and Norhazira Abu Hayyan while the respondent was represented by Wan Rohimi Wan Daud, Nik Bahrum Nik Abdulllah, Yusfarizal Yusoff and Mohd Faizi Che Abu.
In GE15, Tengku Razaleigh failed to retain the Gua Musang seat for a 12th time when he lost to Mohd Azizi by a majority of just 163 votes.
Mohd Azizi (PAS-Bersatu) obtained 21,826 votes while Tengku Razaleigh (BN-UMNO) garnered 21,663 votes.
On Jan 3, Mohd Azmi filed the petition to challenge the Gua Musang election result and Mohd Azizi then submitted his preliminary objection to cancel the election petition.
