BEAUFORT, SABAH – Umno on Saturday (Jan 18) retained its parliamentary seat in a closely watched by-election in Kimanis, Sabah, defeating a candidate from Parti Warisan Sabah – an ally of Malaysia’s ruling coalition Pakatan Harapan, unofficial results called by Malaysian media said.

Umno’s candidate, Datuk Mohamad Alamin, who contested under the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition ticket, received 11,992 votes, against 10,200 polled by Warisan’s Datuk Karim Bujang, in a direct one-on-one fight, Malayskini news site reported.

The Star newspaper said unofficial tally showed Mr Mohamad getting 10,449 against Mr Karim’s 8,840, with fewer than 1,000 votes left to count.

The Kimanis seat is a stronghold of Umno-BN and was last held by former foreign minister Anifah Aman, who won the seat by a narrow 156-vote margin in the May 2018 general election in a three-cornered fight.

This Sabah federal seat was declared vacant after the Federal Court on Dec 2 upheld the Election Court’s ruling nullifying Datuk Anifah’s victory in the 2018 elections due to irregularities.

Mr Anifah had won the seat with a 156-vote majority, securing 11,942 votes against Mr Karim’s 11,786 votes, while another candidate, Mr Jaafar Ismail of Parti Harapan Rakyat Sabah, obtained 1,300 votes.

Kimanis was the 10th by-election held since the May 2018 general election, a mix of state-assembly and parliament seats, with Pakatan winning five and BN now winning five too with the Kimanis victory.

Last year (2019), BN won four of the five by-elections while PH only won one seat in Sandakan, Sabah in a Chinese-majority seat.

Malaysiakini reported that there are 29,664 eligible voters in Kimanis and slightly more than 80 percent of eligible voters were estimated to have cast their ballots in the by-election.

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