PUTRAJAYA: The Federal Court has fixed June 19 to hear the appeals by Barisan Nasional (BN) over two election petitions which were filed in a bid to nullify the 15th General Election (GE15) results for the Putrajaya and Gua Musang parliamentary seats.
Lawyer Yusfarizal Yussoff, representing Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) vice-president Datuk Dr Mohd Radzi Md Jidin, when contacted by Bernama, confirmed the hearing date for the appeals of the election petitions.
Putrajaya UMNO division vice-chief Datuk Ahmad Faisal Abdul Karim had filed the election petition seeking to nullify the GE15 results for the Putrajaya parliamentary seat, while Mohd Azmi Mahmood, a representative for BN candidate Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah filed the petition for the Gua Musang parliamentary seat.
Mohd Radzi, who contested under the Perikatan Nasional (PN) ticket inn GE15, won the Putrajaya parliamentary seat, defeating Putrajaya four-term incumbent Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor of BN with a majority vote of 2,310 in a six-cornered fight.
Meanwhile, PAS-Bersatu candidate Datuk Mohd Azizi Abu Naim won the Gua Musang parliamentary seat in the GE15, obtaining 1,826 votes, defeating Tengku Razaleigh.
The High Courts had struck out the election petitions filed by Ahmad Faisal and Mohd Azmi after allowing the preliminary objections raised by Mohd Radzi and Mohd Azizi.
On March 10 this year, the Kuala Lumpur High Court allowed Mohd Radzi’s preliminary objection to strike out the petition after ruling that Ahmad Faisal failed to prove that corrupt practices were committed by either Radzi or his agent.
Meanwhile, on Feb 26 this year, the Kota Bahru High Court struck out Mohd Azmi’s petition after ruling that the petition was filed out of the permitted time frame of 28 days as set out under the Election Offences Act 1954.
Ahmad Faisal and Mohd Azmi subsequently filed their appeals to the Federal Court against the High Court decisions.
In the petition, Ahmad Faisal sought a court order to declare that Mohd Radzi should not have been declared the winner for the Putrajaya seat, alleging that the PN representative had given RM150 to voters as inducement for them to cast their ballots in favour of him.
Meanwhile, Mohd Azmi, in his petition, sought to declare the election result for the Gua Musang parliamentary constituency invalid and for the Election Commission to call for a by-election for the seat.-Bernama
