KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s Election Commission (EC) has announced that polling day for the Johor state election will be on Mar 12, with nominations to take place on Feb 26.
At a media conference after chairing a special meeting on the Johor state election on Wednesday (Feb 9), EC chairman Abdul Ghani Salleh said early voting would take place on Mar 8.
“According to the updated voters’ register, there are 2,597,742 voters for the Johor state election,” he added.
Johor’s state assembly, which has 56 seats, was dissolved by Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar on Jan 22.
The sultan gave his consent for the dissolution after meeting with Chief Minister Hasni Mohammad.
Prior to the dissolution, Mr Hasni justified that his state government needed a fresh mandate as it only held a slim majority following the death of former chief minister Osman Sapian in December last year.
Mr Hasni said that the election was necessary as the stability of the Johor state government was a prerequisite for investors and businesses to expand their operations in the state.
With the death of Mr Osman, who was also state assemblyman for Kempas, the Johor state government held a one-seat majority, with Barisan Nasional (BN) in control of 16 seats while its coalition partners, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) held 11 seats and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) had one.
The opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, comprising the Democratic Action Party (DAP), Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), held 27 seats.
On Jan 24, the United Malays National Organizations (UMNO) announced that it would contest in 42 of the 56 seats.
It was also said that as the main component of BN, it would only allocate four seats to PAS if both parties agreed to cooperate in the upcoming election.
UMNO had also said that any political cooperation between BN and PAS in the Johor polls will be carefully studied, according to Bernama, quoting BN deputy chairman and UMNO deputy president Mohamad Hasan.
He said that so far, the majority of UMNO’s grassroots and divisional leaders wanted BN to enter the election alone.
UMNO, PAS and Bersatu are part of the federal government under the prime ministership of UMNO vice president Ismail Sabri Yaakob.