Azmin comes out tops in S’wak

KUCHING: Incumbent Datuk Seri Azmin Ali has won the deputy president’s race in Sarawak over challenger Rafizi Ramli based on unofficial results.

After 29 divisions voted over the weekend, the unofficial tally from 28 of them showed that Azmin garnered 4,020 votes against 1,884 for Rafizi.

This gives Azmin a healthy lead of 2,136 votes in the state.

The unofficial results also indicated that Azmin won in 24 divisions, while four went to Rafizi.

Results from the controversial Julau division were suspended pending investigations into claims of a cyberattack on the tablets used for e-voting.

Sarawak PKR chairman Baru Bian said polling in Sarawak generally went peacefully apart from some minor incidents in several places.

“I’m happy that the divisions did their best to bring people in to vote, despite the difficulty of transporting people from the rural areas.

“There was not much argument (during the polls) and this is an accepted democratic practice within the party,” he told The Star.

Baru called on party members in the state to remain united after the election.

“Whatever the outcome is, we will support whoever is elected,” he said.

On Saturday, the election committee suspended the results from Julau after the Prey anti-theft software was discovered on 10 of the e-voting tablets.

Its systems and data chief Alvin Teoh was detained by police at Sibu Airport yesterday morning in connection with the alleged tampering.

He was released from the Sibu police headquarters at 5.15pm after having his statement recorded.

According to Sarawak PKR election coordinator Desmond Kho, four police reports were made on the alleged tampering, including one by Teoh himself stating that he had nothing to do with the allegations.

One of the police reports was made by PKR’s Batu Tiga assemblyman Rodziah Ismail, while the election supervisor in Julau also lodged a report.

Another report was lodged by the election committee in Kuala Lumpur yesterday morning asking police to investigate the claims.

Kho also said it was up to the committee to decide when to release the Julau results or order a re-vote, pending investigations and an internal report into the matter.

Barring a re-vote, however, he said it was unlikely that what happened in Julau would affect the election outcome in Sarawak.

“Independent observers in Julau noted that the physical turnout of voters (on Saturday) was not enough to affect the results,” he said.

The count in Julau before the suspension of results was said to be 1,140 for Rafizi and 247 for Azmin.