Nine election petitions filed
KOTA KINABALU: Parti Warisan Sabah and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) filed nine election petitions at the court here and in Sandakan yesterday.
Warisan Secretary General Loretto Padua submitted the election petitions at the High Court Registration Office here.
During a press conference held at the court ground, Loretto explained that the election petitions filed were for four parliamentary seats and four state assembly seats.
The four parliamentary seats were Kimanis, Sipitang, Keningau and Libaran; while the four state seats were Sg Sibuga, Kundasang, Kiulu and Sook.
They were won by Barisan Nasional’s (BN) Datuk Seri Anifah Aman (Kimanis), Hafez Musa (Sipitang), Datuk Zakaria Edris (Libaran), Datuk Dr Jeffrey Kitingan (Keningau), former Sabah Umno chief Datuk seri Musa Aman (Sungai Sibuga), PBRS deputy president Datuk Alfred Ellron Angin (Sook) and PBS Supreme Council members Datuk Dr Joachim Gunsalam (Kundasang) and Datuk Joniston Bangkuai (Kiulu).
PKR Pensiangan parliamentary candidate Raymond Ahuar also filed an election petition contesting the victory of Barisan Nasional candidate Arthur Joseph Kurup.
Loretto said that the grounds for filing the election petitions included issues relating to postal voters and the signing of the Form 14.
He also said that they were very confident of the eight election petitions that were submitted.
“We are confident, but I cannot go to the merits of the matter. These eight are the ones we are most confident,” he said.
June 18 was the last day to submit the election petitions.
Loretto added that the respective parties should expect to be served with the petitions by late Monday or Tuesday. The petitions were filed at 9.15am.
In Sandakan, Parti Warisan Sabah’s Sungai Sibuga state candidate, Asmara Abdul Rahman and Libaran parliament candidate, Irwanshah Mustapa submitted their election petitions to the High Court around 1pm yesterday.
During the last election, Asmara lost to Musa in a threecornered fight by 2,184 votes. Asmara obtained 12,319 votes against Musa’s 14,503 votes.
For the three-way fight for the Libaran seat, Irwanshah garnered 17,121 votes against Zakaria who won by more than 678 votes.
On Sunday, Warisan president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal said he had given the party’s lawyers the mandate to file election petitions if they found substantial proof of irregularities concerning the seats in question.