DAP’s Oscar Ling retains Sibu with bigger majority

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Ling and supporters celebrate his winning over BN-SUPP candidate Dato Andrew Wong Kee Yew

SIBU: Oscar Ling Chai Yew of DAP successfully retained the Sibu parliamentary seat by a majority of 11,422 votes in the state’s only four cornered fight.

Ling garnered 33,811 votes while BN-SUPP candidate Dato Andrew Wong Kee Yew polled 22,389 votes.

The two other candidates, Jamie Tiew Yen Huong of Sarawak Peace Party (Peace) polled 377 votes while Simon Tiong Ing Tung of State Reform Party (STAR) managed to secure only 176 votes. Both candidates lost their deposits.

There were 515 spoilt votes, and the voter turnout was 77.8 per cent.

The Sibu constituency has 74,149 registered voters.

Returning Officer Wong Hee Sieng announced the results at Sibu Civic Centre at 9.40pm last night.

In the 13th General Election, Ling won by a majority of 2,841 votes.

For the record, Ling was a new face fielded by DAP in the 2013 polls, where he polled 26,808 votes to beat BN’s Temenggong  Dato Vincent Lau who received 23,967 votes,and and Independent Narawi Haron who polled 203 votes.

When interviewed by reporters later, Ling said: “This is a historic feat for me. Thank you to all Sibu voters for allowing me to serve you for another term.

“They have created another history in Sibu and I won by 11,422 votes majority. This is indeed historic as never before DAP in Sibu had won with such a big majority.

“This time around, it is really a Malaysian tsunami and we are looking forward to a new government.”