Johor Chief Minister Onn Hafiz Ghazi credits 'team effort' by BN & PH for landslide by-election win

Malaysia's Barisan Nasional (BN) has retained the Johor state assembly seat of Mahkota, after a combined effort by BN and its federal government partner Pakatan Harapan (PH).

The by-election was held on Sep. 28, and the BN candidate received nearly 80 per cent of the vote.

Landslide

The by-election was a straight fight between BN candidate Syed Hussien Syed Abdullah and opposition Perikatan Nasional’s (PN) Mohamad Haizan Jaafar.

The Star reported that BN managed to pick up 27,995 votes, over 79 per cent of the vote, to PN’s 7,347, 20.8 per cent of votes.

Election turnout was 53.8 per cent, lower than the 2022 state election’s 57.3 per cent.

The by-election was called after the death of the incumbent Sharifah Azizah Syed Zain in August 2024.

Sharifah had comfortably won a multi-cornered fight in June 2022 against PH and Perikatan Nasional (PN), 45.9 per cent to 31.6 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.

Since then, a national general election has been held, with BN joining with PH to form a unity government, with Anwar Ibrahim at the helm.

Machinery test

The by-election had been cast as a test of the unity government’s strength, both amongst the electorate and with its coalition partners.

PH and BN have traditionally been electoral rivals, but are now partners in Anwar's government.

BN’s election director for the by-election and Johor Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) Onn Hafiz Ghazi, credited the victory to the “excellent collaboration” between the BN and PH election machinery, as reported by the Malay Mail.

The combined machinery had “toiled day and night” throughout the campaign period.

It appears that with the two coalition partners not competing against each other, their vote was able to combine effectively to win the seat handily.

Onn Hafiz campaigned hard in the final weeks of the campaign, notably calling on Johoreans living and working in Singapore to return to vote.

He even promised that every immigration counter at both the Causeway and Second Link would be fully manned to facilitate their return.

He was even spotted ferrying voters to polling stations on Sep. 28.

Get to work

After the votes were counted, he expressed “a million thanks” to the voters, and promised that Syed Hussien would “get straight to work for the community” the next day.

He also thanked Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and BN Chairman, and deputy prime minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

The victory came despite depressed local Chinese support.

MalaysiaKini reports that in the seat’s largest Chinese polling district where 80 per cent of the population was Chinese, only 1,335 votes were cast, down from 1,925 in 2022.

There had been fears of a Chinese boycott of the election due to an ongoing spat between UMNO youth chief Muhamad Akmal Saleh, from BN, and the Democratic Action Party’s Teresa Kok, from PH.

While there was a noticeable decrease in Chinese participation, it was not a full boycott.

Free Malaysia Today reported that PN's election director Azmin Ali was downplaying the loss, saying that PN had not lost many of its votes from 2022.

Azmin said that the party had done its best, despite the area being heavily favouring either PH or BN.

PN, he said, would continue to work to convince voters in preparation for the next general election.

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Top image via Onn Hafiz Ghazi/Facebook