SEREMBAN, March 30: It will be a four-cornered fight for the Rantau State seat. When nomination closed at 10am, four candidates had submitted their nomination papers.
According to Malaysiakini, they were Pakatan Harapan's Dr S Streram, BN's Mohamad Hasan and two aspiring Independent candidates R Malar and Mohd Nor Yasin.
According to Bernama, Dewan Serbaguna Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SJKC) Bandar Sri Sendayan here, which is the nomination centre for the Rantau by-election, opened at 9am sharp today and closed an hour later.
Supporters of the ruling Pakatan Harapan coalition and Barisan Nasional (BN), which became the Opposition after the 14th general election (GE14) last May, had started to gather outside as early as 7am.
Candidates were given one hour to file in their nomination papers. Once everything is in order, the returning officer will officially announce the candidates qualified to contest the State seat in Negeri Sembilan.
The by-election was called after the Election Court nullified the results for the seat in GE14 following a petition by Dr S. Streram, PH’s candidate from PKR who was denied permission to enter the nomination centre on the flimsy grounds that he did not have an Election Commission pass to do so.
This gave automatic victory to the BN candidate Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, who was the Menteri Besar of Negeri Sembilan then.
The EC has allowed 14 days for campaigning. Early voting is on April 9 and polling on April 13.
The constituency has 20,926 registered voters -20,804 ordinary voters, 118 early voters and four absentee voters.
The racial breakdown is as follows: 55.11 percent or 11,615 voters are Malays, Chinese (18.8%/3,863 voters), Indians (26.06%/5,441 voters) and others (0.03%/seven).
This is the seventh by election after GE14. The first was for the Sungai Kandis State seat in Selangor on Aug 4 followed by Balakong and Seri Setia (both State seats in Selangor) on Sept 8 , Port Dickson Parliamentary seat in Negeri Sembilan (Oct 13); Cameron Highlands Parliamentary seat in Pahang (Jan 26 and Semenyih State seat in Selangor (March 2).