See (fourth right) and his supporters gesture as they celebrate their victory in this state election.
KUCHING: Batu Lintang incumbent See Chee How has retained his seat with a comfortable majority of 4,385 votes.
See, who is state PKR vice chairman, polled 10,758 votes while his opponents Sih Hua Tong (BN) polled 6,373 votes and Lina Soo (STAR) received 331 votes.
The total number of rejected votes was 110, while voter turnout for the constituency was 62.7 per cent. Batu Lintang constituency has 28,105 registered voters.
When met after the election result announcement, See said the win was not his personal victory and thanked his election team members who had worked very hard for this election.
“I also must thank the Election Commission officers, police and not forgetting the press that have given me a lot of coverage and support for the campaign that we were carrying out.”
Comparing the result with the 2011 state election, See said this time there was a reduction of 2,477 votes for him and his closest opponent Sih had got 1,519 more votes.
In the 2011 state election, See won with a majority of 8,381 after polling 13,235 votes while Sih received 4,854 votes and Soo polled 290 votes.
He said the party needed to conduct a post-mortem to find out what steps could be taken to ensure a better result in the next state election.
When asked whether the reduction of votes was due to Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem’s factor, See said this was beyond their control.
“Of course, I’m sure there will be some effect on the voters but to me, we have to look at things that we can do to strengthen ourselves to make sure that we will have a better result the next round.”
See, who is state PKR election director, was very grateful that Ba Kelalan incumbent Baru Bian had delivered the best result for PKR.
“Despite the presence of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, his deputy Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and a lot of ministers as well as senior politicians from Sabah, Baru could still retain the seat with a higher majority.
“So much money was poured in there (Ba Kelalan) which we calculated not less than RM50 million with voters of 7,375. I can only say faith wins the day in Ba Kelalan and that is really important for us. Same thing for Krian where we won.”
Baru was returned as Ba Kelalan assemblyman with a majority of 538 votes while Krian incumbent Ali Biju won with a majority of 1,640 votes after polling 5,388 votes, while his opponent Kilat Beriak from BN polled 3,748 votes.
As for the 37 seats that PKR lost, See said he had not got the full results but noticed that some of the party’s young candidates did quite well in some of the rural seats.
“The efforts that they put in before the election and running up to the election, those showed in the result.”