(May 5): Barisan Nasional (BN) today comfortably retained the Rompin parliamentary seat in the by-election for the Pahang southeastern constituency, albeit with a much lower majority.

BN’s Datuk Hasan Arifin defeated PAS’s Nazri Ahmad with a majority of 8,895, the Election Commission (EC) announced at 10.23pm.

Hasan obtained 23,796 votes while Nazri obtained 14,901, in a by-election that saw a 73% turnout when polls closed at 5pm earlier today. There were 501 spoilt votes.

According to Bernama, Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that the party would conduct a post-mortem on the reduced majority.

In 2013, the late Tan Sri Jalamuddin Jarjis won the seat with a 15,114 majority in another straight fight against PAS’s Nuridah Mohd Salleh.

85.5% of the 53,596 registered voters in the constituency turned out for the 2013 elections.

87 % of the voters are Malay, followed by the Orang Asli, 9 % Indians and only 2 % Chinese.

A majority of the voters come from some 14 Felda settlements in the constituency.

Hasan, 62, formerly served as Pahang’s deputy menteri besar between 1995 to 1999, and was a four-term state assemblyman in Pahang for the Tioman and Bukit Ibam state constituencies.

The by-election was called after Jamaluddin, a six-term MP for Rompin and a close friend of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, was killed in a helicopter crash near Semenyih, Selangor, on April 4, while returning from the wedding reception for Najib’s daughter in Pekan.

Jamaluddin, who formerly also served as the Malaysian envoy to the United States, was 63 years old.

PAS’s campaign in the by-election was greatly hindered by a lack of support from their Pakatan Rakyat partners PKR and DAP. – The Malaysian Insider