KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 ― Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (Muda) has won one of the seven state seats it contested in the Johor polls and has not lost the deposit in any of these seats despite being an "underdog” in multi-cornered fights, its president Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman said tonight.

Thanking Johor voters for giving Muda the chance to contest in the Johor state elections and to serve the people, Syed Saddiq stressed that the political party will continue to serve the public regardless of whether it won or lost.

"Because this is our responsibility to voters, win or lose, we have to serve as best as we can to be a quality opposition, to be a good check and balance system,” he said in a press conference that was streamed live on Muda’s Facebook page, declaring this as "service politics” or politics based on serving the public.

He also thanked Johor voters for giving Muda’s secretary-general Amira Aisya Abd Aziz the opportunity to serve, noting that an unofficial count showed her as leading by a very big majority of 8,300 votes.

"We all in this room acknowledge that Muda is a party that has started to take hold (bertapak), we admit we are a new party, a newbie, an underdog, but we have served as best as we can, wanting to bring a new politics not just in the state of Johor, but in Malaysia as a whole,” he said.

He noted that Muda also performed well in the state seat of Tenang where the party’s candidate Lim Wei Jiet came in second with a very strong lead over other contenders in the four-corner fight.

He also said Muda did not lose deposit in any state seats despite the low voter turnout rate.

Syed Saddiq also congratulated Amira Aisya, while urging her to set a "golden standard” and to show a good track record, stressing that the priority of the public must come before personal interests for an elected representative.

The Johor-born lawyer Amira Aisya herself said winning would not be the end of the race for her, but would mark the beginning of her serving the people in Puteri Wangsa.

In this state election, Muda fielded candidates in seven seats that were all multi-corner fights, including Amira Aisya in Puteri Wangsa where she contested against five other candidates.

After the press conference, the Election Commission’s official results showed that Amira Aisya had won the Puteri Wangsa seat by garnering 22,884 votes, beating the Barisan Nasional candidate Ng Yew Aik who garnered 15,770 votes with a 7,114 majority.

The other Muda candidates included Muda vice-president and lawyer Lim Wei Jiet who contested against three other candidates in the Tenang state seat.

Tonight, Lim took to Twitter to apologise for not being able to win Tenang for Muda, expressing pride in his team’s achievements as first-time contenders and in a seat with rural and Felda areas that were said to be rival Barisan Nasional’s stronghold, concluding: "It has been an honour.”

Several Twitter users have commented that Lim’s performance in Tenang was remarkable, considering that he was the sole ethnic Chinese candidate against ethnic Malay candidates in a seat that was said to be Malay majority.

The other Muda candidates were party co-founder Nurafiqah M. Zulkifli for the Bukit Kepong seat, party state chief Azrol Rahani for the Bukit Permai seat, party state secretary Fikri Musa for the Parit Raja seat, party state deputy chief Sangaran Rawisandiran for the Machap seat, and party state information chief Rasid Abu Bakar for the Larkin seat.