JOHOR BARU, Feb 24 — The Johor state election process will begin this Saturday, a little over a month after the dissolution of the State Legislative Assembly on January 22.

At the nomination process, which will start at 9am on Saturday, all candidates for the 56 seats will only have an hour to submit their nomination papers before the final list of candidates are announced by the returning officers.

The Johor state election is the fourth being called after the 14th General Election (GE14) after that of Sabah in September 2020, and Melaka and Sarawak, late last year.

A minimum of a three-cornered fight involving Barisan Nasional (BN), Perikatan Nasional (PN) and a combination of Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda), which was just registered last December, is expected at the polls.

There are also Parti Pejuang Tanahair (Pejuang) which will contest 42 seats, Parti Bangsa Malaysia (PBM) (four) and Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) (one), as well as Parti Warisan (Warisan), which had announced its official entry to the polls.

Unlike the other state elections, the Johor polls campaign is expected to be "merrier” with more relaxed standard operating procedures (SOP) amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Throughout the 14-day campaign period, the Election Commission (EC) had also allowed ceramah (political talk), physical campaign and house visits to be carried out.

However, the campaign and ceramah are only allowed to be held at party headquarters or official operations rooms with police approval and participation of not more than 100 people.

Each ceramah, lecture or campaign can only be held for a maximum of two hours and shall not go beyond 10pm.

Any ceramah or lecture at public places is not allowed.

For house visits, only five people are allowed to enter and meet with the occupants of the house, while distributions of pamphlets can only be done from outside the gates.

On the SOP for the polling day, all voters are required to wear double masks, while those who are symptomatic would be isolated immediately from other voters and to cast their votes in a special tent, room or area.

The need to have snap polls in Johor surfaced with the death of Kempas assemblyman, who is also former Johor mentri besar on December 21 last year, which left the BN-led state government with only 28 seats against PH’s 27 seats.

Sultan of Johor Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar on January 22 consented to the dissolution of the Johor State Assembly to pave the way for the state election.

The EC then set February 26 for nomination, March 8 for early voting and March 12 for polling.

A total of 2,574,835 regular voters out of 2,597,742 registered voters are expected to cast their votes in the polls.

There will be 22,531 early voters comprising 10,955 military personnel and spouses, 11,576 police personnel as well as 376 absent voters overseas.

The state election will also see a new dynamic in politics when more than 700,000 young voters are eligible to vote following the implementation of Undi18 or the automatic voter registration.

In the GE14, PH received the mandate to form the state government after winning 36 seats with DAP getting 14, Amanah (nine), PKR (five) and Bersatu (eight).

BN only garnered 19 seats while PAS secured one.

The PH government, however, fell after Bersatu decided to leave the coalition on February 24, 2020, and teamed up with BN and PAS to form a new state government with a majority of 29 seats in the 56-seat state assembly. — Bernama