PKR’S controversy-laden polls finally came to a close yesterday after dragging on for almost five months.
PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail retained her post uncontested, while incumbent deputy president Azmin Ali beat Datuk Saifuddin Nasution by 11,819 votes.
Azmin garnered 22,562 votes while Saifuddin, who is PKR secretary-general, only managed to obtain 10,743 votes.
The third contender for the PKR deputy presidency, Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, was disqualified after he was sacked from the party on Aug 9 for failing to toe the party line and refusing to step down as Selangor menteri besar.
At the last count, Khalid was second in the race for the post after tallying more than 17,600 votes.
The four available PKR vice-president’s posts were snatched up by Nurul Izzah Anwar, Tian Chua, Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin and Rafizi Ramli. Incumbents Nurul Izzah and Tian Chua won the contest comfortably with 29,712 and 22,324 votes respectively.
Former PKR Youth chief Shamsul who received 19,839 votes and party strategist Rafizi who got 18,887 votes won their seats with relative ease, edging out 10 other competitors. Fuziah Salleh and N. Surendran, however, failed to defend their vice-president’s posts after only managing to garner 16,809 and 4,739 votes respectively.
In the contest for the PKR Youth chief position, Seri Setia assemblyman Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad defeated popular PKR leader Amirudin Shari by a razor-thin majority of 250 votes.
Nik Nazmi, who is also Selangor Deputy Speaker, obtained 4,509 votes, while Amirudin, who was originally touted to win, received 4,259 votes.
Incumbent PKR Wanita chief Zuraida Kamaruddin retained her post after obtaining 9,392 votes compared with Rodziah Ismail’s 9,109 votes.
The long-awaited results of the controversial party election were read out by PKR election committee director Datuk Johari Abdul at the party’s headquarters here yesterday.
Johari said the election results were final and that there were no objections so far.
“Members who are dissatisfied with the results should not take the matter to court, as doing so goes against PKR’s constitution. If they are adamant, they may be dismissed from the party.”