Voting ends, counting begins

People queue to vote in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur May 5, 2013. Long lines were reported at polling stations at the start of the day.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 5 — Balloting was declared officially closed at 5pm today and counting began for votes cast in 222 federal and 505 state seats nationwide in a tense battle that will decide Malaysia’s fate over the next five years.

According to the Election Commission the first results are expected after 7pm. Official voter turnout is around 80 per cent.

After 15 days of hectic campaigning that ended with hundreds of complaints of polling irregularities today, Malaysia will find out within hours who will be the next to helm their nation, finally putting an end to more than a year of uncertainty.

The acrimonious campaigning also culminated in violence today, when a crowd swarmed a police van in Ayer Hitam following allegations that two youths were assaulted by men inside. Penang caretaker chief minister Lim Guan Eng was forced to the scene to defuse the situation. Three men were reported hurt, while one was arrested.

Blasts had also been reported at several locations during campaigning last week, forcing police to come out repeatedly to publicly reassure voters of safety measures at polling stations.

Election 2013 saw the introduction of indelible ink by the Election Commission, but the move has left a stain on the regulators after voters complained en masse of the ease with which the supposedly-permanent markings were removed.

Early ground surveys had reported a neck-and-neck race between the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR), the fledgling federal opposition pact that is gunning to break BN’s half-a-century hold over Malaysia.

People display their fingers marked with indelible ink in Skudai, May 5, 2013. Complaints have surfaced about the ink’s lack of adherence.

According to a poll by Merdeka Center for Opinion Research released on Friday, PR is ahead of BN by a hair’s breadth, with 42 per cent of those surveyed backing the opposition pact and 41 per cent batting for BN.

But four per cent of respondents refused to respond and 13 per cent claimed ignorance, indicating that the polls contest is still largely a toss-up between both contenders.

“Based on the survey results and the assumption that the election is free and fair, we estimate that neither Barisan Nasional nor Pakatan Rakyat were in the lead as at 9:30pm on May 2, 2013,” Merdeka Center said in a statement.

The survey was carried out by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research between 9:00am on April 28 and 9.30pm on May 2, involving 1,600 registered voters comprising 59 per cent Malay, 32 per cent Chinese and nine per cent Indian respondents who were interviewed by telephone in the poll.

BN leaders have expressed confidence of doing better than Election 2008, saying their election machinery has been working hard to canvas votes in both rural and urban areas to ensure its unbroken rule since independence in 1957.

Datuk Seri Najib Razak shows his inked finger after voting in Pekan, May 5, 2013. BN expects to win over 140 federal seats.

The BN also believes it can snare 142 seats, counting on what its officials say was a swing towards the coalition in the last 24 hours in its traditional vote bank of Sabah and Sarawak.

When voting began this morning, there had been a mad rush of voters to polling stations nationwide, causing bumper-to-bumper crawls and long queues all around.

As total of 2.3 million are first-time voters, many among them youths and fence-sitters, key demographics that contenders on both sides of the political divide have been fighting tooth and nail to woo over the stretch of the 15-day campaign.

The EC has said a total of 13,268,002 are eligible to vote, comprising 12,992,661 ordinary voters,161,251 military personnel and their spouses, 111,136 police personnel and their spouses and 2,954 absentee voters.

This is the first time that Malaysians other than civil servants and state scholars are allowed to vote abroad, if they had returned home in the past five years. That vote was held on April 28 but Malaysians living in Singapore, southern Thailand, Brunei or Kalimantan in Indonesia were excluded from the list and had to come home to cast their ballot today.

PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim greets supporters after casting his vote in Permatang Pauh, May 5, 2013.

It is estimated that there are nearly 400,000 registered Malaysian voters working in Singapore. Just under 200,000 of them live in Johor alone while the rest vote in other states in Malaysia.

The EC held polling for advance voters from the military, police and their spouses on April 30 in 544 polling centres throughout Malaysia.

It also said that 234,905 election workers will be on duty today in the election that has a budget of RM400 million.

(Source: The Malaysian Insider)