Three of 31 women MPs from Sabah
KOTA KINABALU: Three of the 31 women members of parliament (MPs) who won in the 15th General Election (GE15) are from Sabah.
They are Warisan’s Isnaraissah Munirah Majilis, PH’s Vivian Wong Shir Yee and Datuk Siti Aminah Aching representing Umno.
Isnaraissah, Vivian and Siti Aminah were among the 127 women candidates from Sabah.
Isnaraissah Munirah won the Kota Belud parliamentary seat with an impressive number of votes – 25,148 from 55,272 voters who turned up during the polling day on Nov 19.
The former engineer obtained 4,582 majority.
Munirah who is also Warisan’s Wirawati chief, won the threecornered battle against two men, BN’s heavyweight Datuk Seri Abdul Rahman Dahlan and Madely Modily Bangali from PH.
This is her second term serving in Kota Belud.
The voters of Sandakan also gave the mandate to Vivian for the second time after winning a six-cornered contest against GRS, Warisan and three Independent candidates.
Vivian’s total votes were 16,673 with the highest majority among the three MPs, which is 11,031.
In 2019, Vivian won a landslide victory in the Sandakan byelection under a DAP ticket against PBS’ Datuk Linda Tsen.
Siti Aminah was elected in Beaufort, where she secured 10,570 votes.
She was chosen to stand in Beaufort replacing incumbent Datuk Azizah Dun of Bersatu who was dropped from contesting.
Beaufort is a tradition seat for Umno, and Azizah was not chosen as a candidate following her decision to join Bersatu.
Sadly, Sabah PH chairman Datuk Christina Liew has failed to defend the Tawau parliamentary seat in a sixcornered fight.
Before GE15, Sabah has four women MPs namely Munirah, Vivian, Christina and Azizah.
According to statistic from the Election Commission (EC), Sabah has 833,847 women from the 1,689,387 total voters.
On Saturday’s polling day, 61 per cent cast their votes in Sabah.
Nationwide, a total of 127 women contested parliamentary seats in the GE15 and 15 out of 60 candidates contesting the state seats in Perlis, Perak and Pahang managed to win their respective seats.
Of those contesting parliamentary seats, 16 were Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidates, Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) (five candidates), Perikatan Nasional (PN) (seven candidates), three from Barisan Nasional (BN), and one from Warisan, while 15 women candidates contested the state seats comprising PH (seven candidates), PN (five candidates) and three BN candidates.
Among the PH candidates who managed to win seats were former Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail who won the Bandar Tun Razak parliamentary seat with a majority of 9,817 votes, Teo Nie Ching, Teresa Kok Sim and Hannah Yeoh who retained the Kulai, Seputeh and Segambut seats respectively. Meanwhile, GPS candidates namely former Tourism Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Nancy Shukri secured the Santubong parliamentary seat with a 19,485-vote majority and Datuk Rubiah Wang retained the Kota Samarahan parliamentary seat.
A fresh face fielded by GPS, Rodiyah Sapiee defeated PH candidate Cikgu Lahaji to win the Batang Sadong parliamentary seat with a majority of 14,893 votes.
In the meantime, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Noraini Ahmad who won the Parit Sulong parliamentary constituency with a majority of 11,474 votes after obtaining 25,740 votes, is among BN women candidates who managed to secure seats.
Besides her, Umno Supreme Council member, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said retained the Pengerang parliamentary seat when she managed to garner 21,738 votes.
Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin of PN defended the Masjid Tanah seat which she won in GE14 on the BN ticket, after obtaining 25,604 votes with a majority of 4,411 and defeating BN candidate, Abdul Hakim Abdul Wahid.
Meanwhile, PH’s stronghold, the Permatang Pauh seat fell into the hands of the challenger from PN when Nurul Izzah Anwar lost to Muhammad Fawwaz Mat Jan with a majority of 5,272 votes.
Incumbent Ampang Member of Parliament Datuk Zuraida Kamarudin failed to defend the seat in the fight against nine other contenders when she only managed to garner 4,589 votes under Parti Bangsa Malaysia (PBM).
The number of women candidates contesting in GE15 went down from 251 to 187 candidates in contrast with GE14.
PH managed to win 82 parliamentary seats, PN (73), BN (30), GPS (22), Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) (6), Warisan (3), PBM one seat and two independent candidates.