After narrowly losing by 167 votes to Perikatan Nasional (PN), Pakatan Harapan (PH) Sungai Kandis state assembly candidate Zawawi Mughni claimed there had been "unreasonable irregularities" during the tallying of votes for the seat when nearly 2,000 ballot papers were found missing.
In a press conference last night, the former exco for Islamic religious affairs, consumers and the halal industry said that some channels were found to be missing between 200 and 500 ballot papers after the tallying was done at the official Sungai Kandis state assembly vote tallying centre.
"It means that the ballot paper issued with the ballot paper counted is not the same," he said.
According to him, the significant difference was then reported to the head of the polling station (KTM) of the Election Commission (SPR), but the officer in charge claimed that there was a possibility of the voter bringing back the ballot paper.
"If one or two ballot papers we can accept, but when we do the tallying, there is one channel up to 200 (lost), another channel up to 500. Won't up to 500 people bring back the ballot papers?" the question.
"So, we think it is unreasonable and there are things that need to be investigated and tomorrow (today) we will make a police report," he said.
Zawawi claimed that the number of unreturned ballot papers in Form 14 signed by the EC and candidate representatives was also not the same as the number announced last night.
"Form 14 signed by KTM shows that 1,964 ballot papers were not returned but only 110 were recorded on the screen," he said, adding that the "mistake" was not discussed with the candidates.
He said that among the channels found to have lost the most ballot papers was Bandar Puteri, which has been a PH stronghold for a long time.
After today's police report, Zawawi said he would send a petition to the EC within 21 days to challenge the decision in court.
Sungai Kandis state assembly witnessed a three-cornered clash between PH, PN and Muda. PN was represented by Wan Dzahanurin Ahmad who won with 28,926 votes, while Zawawi got 28,759 votes while Muda contested Afriena Shaqira Sariff lost his deposit with only 1,341 votes.
In the 2018 by-election, Zawawi won in the Sungai Kandis state assembly with a majority of 5,842 votes. Sungai Kandis state assembly has almost 78,000 voters with 75.6% turnout in yesterday's general election.
