Election Day
On the morning of election day before the polls opened, PAS supporters held up buses they suspected of ferrying phantom voters to polling stations. The buses were diverted to a police station, where the identities of their passengers were ascertained. It was later announced that they were legitimate voters but registered in other constituencies, and had been brought in by UMNO for some last-minute campaigning.
Both UMNO and PAS organised transportation for voters, with UMNO going as far as to pay for the expenses of bringing home out-of-state voters, including those living overseas. Polls opened at 9am and closed at 5pm, and in the evening Hanafi was declared the victor. However, as his margin of victory, 129 votes with 7,419 votes to Hanifa's 7,290, was smaller than 2%, election rules gave PAS the right to demand a recount the following day. The recount was held at 10am, and confirmed the result; however, Hanafi's margin was increased to 139, with the recount giving him 7,422 votes to Hanifa's 7,288. The turnout for the election was 83.04%, higher than the 77.6% seen in the previous year's general election.
The election result was seen as crushing for Ibrahim's political career, and also possibly for Anwar's as well. Anwar had lent heavy support to PAS, despite his proclaimed misgivings about its goal of establishing Malaysia as an Islamic state. PAS, which had been expecting the election to act as a bellwether on how the electorate would respond to its internal reforms, was seen by analysts as now having trouble evaluating its new policies due to the election's indeterminate results.
Although both Anwar and Ibrahim had large audiences at speeches (ceramah) they held, where they criticised, among others, Abdullah's Islam Hadhari and the recent lock-up detainee abuse scandal, on polling day, the voters appeared to desert PAS and Ibrahim. Some suggested this could be due to most of the attendees at the speeches not being voters in the constituency, while others argued that voters were swayed by BN's promises of development.
PAS declared BN had won by using illegal tactics, and declared it would file a report with the Election Commission (EC). Some cynical members of the independent media argued that the postal ballots had been stuffed, and asked how there could be 212 postal voters when there were only 195 registered postal voters, suggesting BN had won using underhanded tactics.
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), a key member of the Barisan Nasional, claimed they had succeeded at winning the Chinese vote in the constituency, with supposedly 95% of the 800 Chinese voters there voting for BN. "We even persuaded a few Chinese voters who were planning to go on holiday to China to postpone their trip ... to vote on Tuesday," said one MCA official. He also said 80 of 130 Chinese voters living outside the constituency returned to cast their votes.
Read more about this topic: Pengkalan Pasir By-election, 2005
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