PAKATAN Harapan has conceded defeat in the Malacca elections and extended its congratulations to Barisan Nasional (BN) after the coalition’s resounding electoral success.

At a press conference in Malacca, PH secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution said after conceding the state polls, the voting outcome will have to be methodically analysed.

“Despite receiving the mandate from the people of Malacca in 2018, due to the political instability, we were unable to complete the term.

“However, we must accept the mandate of the people today as it was done through the ballot box,” he said.

The Election Commission (EC) announced that BN had won more than half the seats contested in state elections just now. 

“BN has won 15 out of the 28 seats,” said EC chairman Abdul Ghani Salleh in a press conference tonight.

The results are still being tabulated but the current projection is that BN will win 21 seats in the 28-seat assembly while PH will pick up five. Perikatan Nasional (PN) has won two seats.

Abdul Ghani said that the election process had run smoothly and that BN’s majority was confirmed at around 9.40pm tonight.

The elections chief, however, did not provide more details about the results of other parties or on voter turnout.

There were a total of 217 polling stations and 1,109 voting streams in the 28 state seats.

The polls saw a total of 112 candidates from BN, PH, and PN, Parti Bumiputera Perkasa Malaysia (Putra), Parti Perikatan India Muslim Nasional (Iman) as well as independents.

Malacca PH chief Adly Zahari said the pact had been done in by the low voter turnout.

“It cannot be denied that from the start, we have been telling everyone that our hopes were in voter turnout being more than 70%. We also knew that the Covid-19 pandemic would affect the rate.

“Our biggest challenge has been sending our messages to the rakyat. Despite giving our all through social media, it was not enough. We will study (what went wrong),” he said at the same press conference.

PH chief whip coordinator Anthony Loke said the pact will have to push hard to get the numbers it had at the last general election to do well at the GE15.

“This is a huge challenge. If we look at the voters’ turnout this time, it fell quite considerably compared to the last election.

“This is among the factors that resulted in our failing to defend many of the seats that we won previously,” he said. – November 20, 2021.