KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Election Court has declared Datuk Seri Anifah Aman’s win in the Kimanis parliamentary seat in the 14th General Election (GE14) as null and void and ordered fresh polls for the seat.
Election Court Judge Lee Heng Cheong made the ruling after the court found irregularities with regard to the ballot boxes, which had elements of manipulation.
In addition, he said the presence of additional voting papers could also have violated election laws and in turn affected election outcome.
In SK Mandahan and Bambangan, Lee ruled that failure of the returning officer to provide Form 13 which was empty means there was no document to verify how many ballot papers were issued.
The election petition was filed by Parti Warisan Sabah’s Datuk Karim Bujang, the Sabah based party’s candidate in the May 9 polls, to challenge the outcome of the polls.
Karim filed the petition on June 18 last year at the High Court and named Anifah as the first respondent and the Election Commission as the second respondent.
Anifah’s counsel Tengku Fuad Ahmad said the petitioner in his petition had also accused the three term Kimanis Member of Parliament of bribery and corrupt practices.
“The Court dismissed the (bribery and corruption) allegations, which means Datuk Anifah did nothing wrong and he was a good candidate," he said.
Fuad said Anifah had instructed him to file an appeal at the Federal Court.
The former Foreign Minister has 14 days to file his appeal.
Karim was represented by counsel Frederick Chang.
In the May 9 polls, Anifah won the Kimanis Parliamentary constituency with a razor thin 156-vote majority.
In the three-cornered fight, Anifah secured 11,942 votes against Karim who garnered 11,786 votes and Parti Harapan’s Jaafar Ismail, who received 1,300 votes.