BARISAN Nasional’s (BN) thumping defeat in last Saturday’s Kemaman by-election was not a referendum on the unity government,  Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said..

The Umno president denied that support for PAS had grown in the by-election, saying instead that a poor turnout had contributed to BN’s massive defeat.

“We cannot assume it is a referendum (on the unity government) because Kemaman is only a small dot (in the scheme of things).  

“The votes of 141,000 people in Kemaman cannot be accepted as a referendum. We hope they (PAS) are not daydreaming,” the deputy prime minister said in a press conference in Putrajaya today.

He noted that 31.7% of staunch BN supporters had failed to vote on Saturday.  

“There was no increased support for PAS. Aaround 10,000 BN voters, particularly Umno voters, didn’t turn up to vote.

He said this had made it appear as though PAS had gained a bigger percentage of the votes.

In Saturday”s by-election, PAS’ Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar received 64,998 votes, defeating BN’s Raja Mohamed Affandi Raja Mohamed Noor (27,778 votes).

Samsuri claimed 70% of the ballots.

The by-election was called after the Terengganu election court on September 26 nullified the 2022 victory of PAS candidate Che Alias Hamid.

Yesterday Umno vice-president Johari Abdul Ghani said the party’s Supreme Council would hold a post-mortem on the polls.

He said it was too early yet to ascertain the reason for the trouncing. 

“The council will review (Saturday’s) results,” he was quoted as saying in a report by The New Straits Times today. – December 4, 2023.