KOTA BARU: Former Gua Musang member of parliament Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah has filed a petition challenging the outcome of the 15th General Election (GE15) for the parliamentary seat.
The petition was filed on Jan 3 by Mohd Azmi Mahmood on behalf of the Umno veteran through his lawyers Tan Sri Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, Datuk Mohd Hafarizam Harun, Datuk Abu Bakar Isa Ramat, Mohamed Baharudeen Mohamed Ariff, Norhazira Abu Haiyan and Muhammad Amin Othman.
The petition named Perikatan Nasional's (PN) Gua Musang member of parliament Datuk Mohd Azizi Abu Naim, returning officer Ab Fattah Hasbullah and the Election Commission (EC) as respondents.
Mohamed Baharudeen said the petition seeks to declare as invalid the election result for the constituency and for the EC to call for a by-election.
"The petition was filed to challenge the result of GE15 for the Gua Musang parliamentary seat which allegedly involved money politics.
"Our client claims that money was paid out to some voters in return for their ballots.
"Several ballot boxes from certain voting centres were unaccounted for," he claimed.
The management of the case was read out for the first time before the Deputy Registrar of the Kota Baru High Court, Nik Habri Muhamad, at the Kota Baru High Court on Thursday.
The next case management has been fixed on Jan 25.
During GE15, Tengku Razaleigh or fondly known as Ku Li, failed to defend the Gua Musang seat after 12 terms, when he unexpectedly lost to Bersatu's Mohd Azizi, who contested under a Pas ticket.
Azizi won by a slim majority of 163 votes after garnering 21,826 votes while Tengku Razaleigh obtained 21,663 votes.