Federal Court to hear BN election petitions appeals for 2 seats on June 19

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 Bersatu vice-president Mohd Radzi Md Jidin, when contacted by Bernama, confirmed the hearing date for the appeals of the election petitions. 

Putrajaya Umno division vice-chief 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.

Radzi, who contested under the Perikatan Nasional (PN) ticket in GE15, won the Putrajaya parliamentary seat, defeating Putrajaya four-term incumbent Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor of BN with a majority vote of 2,310 in a six-cornered fight.

Meanwhile, PAS-Bersatu candidate Mohd Azizi Abu Naim won the Gua Musang parliamentary seat in the GE15, obtaining 1,826 votes, and defeating Tengku Razaleigh.
 
The High Court had struck out the election petitions filed by Faisal and Azmi after allowing the preliminary objections raised by Radzi and Azizi.

On March 10, the Kuala Lumpur High Court allowed Radzi's preliminary objection to strike out the petition after ruling that Faisal failed to prove that corrupt practices were committed by either Radzi or his agent.

Meanwhile, on Feb 26, the Kota Bahru High Court struck out 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.

Faisal and Azmi subsequently filed their appeals to the Federal Court against the High Court decisions.

In the petition, Faisal sought a court order to declare that Radzi should not have been declared the winner for the Putrajaya seat, alleging that the PN representative had given RM150 to voters as an inducement for them to cast their ballots in favour of him.

Meanwhile, 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.