TELUK INTAN, May 31 — Barisan Nasional (BN) candidate Datuk Mah Siew Keong recaptured the Teluk Intan parliamentary seat after defeating Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud of the DAP by a 238-vote majority in today’s by-election.
Mah, 53, obtained 20,157 votes as compared to Dyana Sofya, 27, who garnered 19,919 votes. The results were announced by Returning Officer Datuk Ibrahim Ahmad at the vote tallying centre, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Abdul Rahman Talib here, at 9.41 pm tonight.
Voter turnout was 66.67 per cent with 40,236 out of the 60,349 registered voters casting their votes. Mah’s victory not only sees him wresting back the seat, which he held before the 2008 general election, but also reinforced his position as the president of Gerakan and the party’s standing in the BN. He won the Gerakan president post in the party’s polls last October.
Mah to be Cabinet Minister
Mah will be appointed as a Cabinet Minister following Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak promising to do so on Thursday.
Najib who is on a six-day official visit to China in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Malaysia-China diplomatic ties, in making the offer said Gerakan was a founding party of the BN coalition and it was a normal practic for the
president of a component party to join the Cabinet, Mah, who described campaigning this time as the dirtiest since he first contested in parliamentary constituency in the 1995 general election (GE), today recaptured the seat he first won in the 1999 GE and retained in the 2004 GE.
He failed to retain it in the 2008 GE following a “political tsunami” then and lost to M. Manogaran of the DAP by 1,470 votes in a straight fight.
Mah failed to recapture the seat in the 2013 GE after being defeated by DAP candidate Seah Leong Peng in a three-cornered fight.
Seah won by a majority of 7,313 votes.
From assemblyman to parliamentarian
Before he first became the MP for Teluk Intan, Mah was an assemblyman for Pasir Bedamar, which comes under the parliamentary constituency, which he won in the 1995 GE.
He was born in Teluk Intan and comes from a prominent family there. He has contested the Teluk Intan seat five times, and has thus won thrice and lost twice.
When he was Teluk Intan MP in 2004, he was appointed Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister, and from 2006 till 2008, he was Deputy Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister.
He was also appointed as the chairman of the Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade), serving from 2010 till Sept 2013.
On Oct 26 last year, Mah was elected as Gerakan president after he defeated his sole challenger, Penang Gerakan chairman Datuk Teng Chang Yeow, in the party polls. He obtained 1,086 votes while Teng managed only 577 votes.
Mah holds a degree in science from the London School of Economic, a masters in manufacturing from City University London, LLN (Hons) from University of East London, and is known as humble person who works hard for the people of
Teluk Intan.
— BERNAMA
