Barisan Nasional (BN) has taken the Mas Gading, Igan, Batang Lupar, Betong, Limbang and Lawas federal seats in Sarawak, giving it the lead early on in Election 2013.
The ruling coalition also won Kapit, Serian, Lubok Antu, Mukah, Baram and Kanowit — all in the east Malaysian state considered its vote bank.
Unofficial results show that the DAP has trounced BN in all 19 state seats it contested in Penang, giving it a commanding lead in its defence of the northern state.
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) only needs two more seats to form a simple majority government in the 40-seat assembly.
Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim also declared an early victory for PR and warned against attempts to hijack the results, just as results began streaming in.
The prime minister-hopeful made the declaration on his Twitter account at 7pm this evening, just two hours after counting started at tallying centres nationwide.
Early vote counts show that BN has kept Putrajaya, which had run the risk of falling to PAS’s Datuk Husam Musa’s strong campaign in Election 2013.
In Johor, DAP is leading in the targeted federal seats of Gelang Patah and Kluang while PKR is ahead in Segamat. All three seats are BN strongholds in the coalition’s bastion state.
Earlier, PKR raised suspicion of electoral fraud following reports of the early vote counts in several key constituencies — including Lembah Pantai, Lumut and Teluk Kemang — which it alleged were overly low and “discomforting”.
In a statement here, the party’s communications bureau noted that these seats include high numbers of military voters who had cast their votes via advanced voting earlier this week on April 30.
“The initial results that we are receiving, according to our election machinery, from the counting of early votes have been very discomforting,” the party said in the statement.
It added that while the military vote for opposition parties have been traditionally low, the current results were “record lows”.
“The ballot boxes have been left in police stations under the care of the police with supervision by the Election Commission (EC),” the party noted.
“We would like to submit our suspicion of the result as they stand,” it added.
Early results streaming in from various sources have indicated that PKR is trailing in the Lembah Pantai seat with its candidate Nurul Izzah Anwar polling a significantly lower number of votes to her contender, BN’s Datuk Raja Nong Chik Zainal Abidin.
In Lumut, MCA secretary-general Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha is defending the federal seat in a close quarter fight with PKR’s Mohamad Imran Abd Hamid, a retired admiral who once commanded a fleet of 2,000 soldiers at the naval base there.
It is estimated that there are nearly 400,000 registered Malaysian voters working in Singapore. Just under 200,000 of them live in Johor alone while the rest vote in other states in Malaysia.
The EC held polling for advance voters from the military, police and their spouses on April 30 in 544 polling centres throughout Malaysia.
*Article first appeared on http://my.news.yahoo.com/pkr-sounds-alarm-in-lembah-pantai-lumut-113605039.html