Battle for No 2: East Malaysia could decide if it is Azmin or Rafizi

PKR POLLS | The battle for the PKR deputy president post has been a fierce affair between incumbent Azmin Ali and his challenger Rafizi Ramli over the past six weeks, with a narrow gap separating the two.

With voting in Peninsular Malaysia drawing to an end yesterday, the focus is now on whether East Malaysia could decide the outcome.

According to Malaysiakini's latest unofficial tally, Azmin has 46,944 votes to date compared to Rafizi's 45,285, a mere 1.8 percent gap between the two candidates.

While voting in Peninsular Malaysia should have officially concluded, there are still some issues to be ironed out.

For example, the results for Malacca and Negeri Sembilan have not been announced due to technical issues while Kuala Selangor is yet to hold its election after the e-voting system was allegedly disrupted by a jammer.

Collectively, Malacca and Negeri Sembilan only comprise seven percent of the PKR membership.

It remains unclear if fresh elections for the two states would be necessary.

Exit polls by Rafizi's team suggested that the current unannounced results would only give him around 300 vote-advantage, not enough to significantly impact the overall gap with Azmin.

However, Sabah and Sarawak together make up nearly a quarter of the PKR membership and could provide a decisive outcome in the PKR deputy president's race.

Sabah, comprising 17.82 percent of the PKR membership, is the second largest after Selangor, which is Azmin's base and had helped put him ahead in the contest.

Sabah would vote on Nov 3 and 4 while Sarawak which contributes 5.33 percent of the party's membership would vote on Nov 10.

Rafizi had been aggressively campaigning in Sabah even before the beginning of the PKR election and would be hedging his bets on Sabah to turn the tide.

However, Azmin, in the last six weeks, showed that he has been able to mitigate Rafizi's advantage in states where the latter won.

The exception was in Perak, where Rafizi performed strongly, taking 60 percent of the votes.

Can the respective strongmen deliver?

In Sarawak, Azmin would likely turn to state PKR chief Baru Bian (photo below), a known ally, to deliver the votes for him.

However, Rafizi too appears to have found a strongman of his own in Sarawak in the form of Larry Sng.

Sng won the Julau parliamentary seat on an independent ticket after Pakatan Harapan sat out of the constituency in the 14th general election to allow him a direct contest against BN, which he won.

Despite only joining PKR after the 14th general election, he has to date garnered at least 25,461 votes for the PKR central leadership committee contest, placing him at 15 out of 88 candidates.

It is worth noting that the votes to date are from West Malaysia, away from his own base in East Malaysia.

The 20 candidates with the most votes would be elected into the PKR central leadership committee.

While the PKR deputy president duel has been close, Azmin's allies have had a strong showing in the vice presidential race, where four positions are up for grabs.

At present, Rafizi's only ally in the top four is Nurul Izzah (52,283 votes) while the other three frontrunners are Azmin's allies, namely Zuraida Kamaruddin (41,313 votes), Dr Xavier Jayakumar (36,739 votes) and Tian Chua (32,909 votes).

Trailing behind are Shamsul Iskandar (31,760 votes), Johari Abdul (29,658 votes), William Leong (28,875 votes) and S Kesavan (28,143).

Shamsul is aligned to Azmin while Johari, William and Kesavan are aligned to Rafizi. For these candidates, East Malaysia would determine whether they can scrape through into the top four.

In the PKR central leadership council race, Azmin's allies make up 14 out of the 20 frontrunners. The remaining six are Rafizi's allies.

However, seven out of the next 10 candidates (20 to 30) are Rafizi's allies and East Malaysia could decide their fate.