PETALING JAYA: Terengganu menteri besar Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar has defended the Kemaman parliamentary seat for PAS, defeating his Barisan Nasional rival Raja Affandi Raja Noor by a whopping 37,220 votes.
Samsuri obtained a total of 64,998 votes while Raja Affandi, a retired general and former defence forces chief, garnered 27,778.
This is a larger margin than the 27,179-vote majority that PAS candidate Che Alias Hamid had in the 15th general election (GE15) when he won the seat.
Che Alias first won the seat in the 2018 general election with just a 2,163-vote majority. It was PAS’s first time winning the Kemaman seat, which used to be a BN stronghold.
The by-election was called following an election court decision on Sept 26 annulling Che Alias’ victory in GE15 last year.
The election court held that the distribution of government aid to voters during the campaign period constituted election bribery.
