2013 Sabah state election

The 2013 Sabah state election was held on Sunday, 5 May 2013 concurrently with the 13th Malaysian general election. 60 state seats were contested to elect the state legislature in the Malaysian state of Sabah. This was the 12th state election in Sabah. The state legislative assembly was dissolved on 3 April 2013 following the announcement by Najib Razak to dissolve the federal Parliament earlier on the same day. Sabahans would also elect 25 representatives to the federal legislature which would be covered as part of the general election.

The 2008 election was won by the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, winning 59 out 60 seats. After the 2008 election, the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) withdrew from the BN coalition, resulting in 2 state seats to move out of BN. As a result, the composition of parties in the state legislature prior to dissolution was BN with 57, SAPP with 2 and DAP with 1 seat.

The final results showed that BN would keep the assembly with 48 seats, a decrease of 11 seats. The newly formed Pakatan Rakyat won 11 seats, comparing to 1 in the last assembly. The Sabah chapter of State Reform Party also won 1 seat via its leader Jeffrey Kitingan, while another Sabah-based party SAPP was wiped out from the assembly.

The Sabah state election were conducted barely 3 months after the incident in Lahad Datu on February that year.

Contenders
BN was defending their previous victory and contested in all 60 state seats. out of the 60 seats, UMNO contested in 32, PBS in 13, UPKO in 6, LDP in 4 MCA in 2, GERAKAN in 2 and PBRS in 1. BN was challenged by the newly formed Pakatan Rakyat coalition consisting of PKR (43), DAP (8) and PAS (9). Other than Pakatan Rakyat, SAPP (41), STAR (47), BERSAMA (3) and KITA (1) also contested in the elections.

Parliamentary election results
There were 25 parliamentary or federal seats contested in Sabah. Barisan Nasional won 22 seats while DAP won 2 seats (Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan) and PKR won 1 (Penampang).

Results


Aftermath
Musa Aman, the leader of UMNO and BN in Sabah, were sworn in as the Chief Minister for the fourth term, on 6 May 2013. His cabinet ministers were sworn in on 9 May 2013.

This election is the only time the DAP-PAS-PKR coalition is referred as Pakatan Rakyat during the Sabah state election campaign (although each party is contesting using their own name and logo). In 2015, the PR coalition was disbanded, due to disagreements between PAS and DAP over the former's insistence to implement the Islamic penal code, known as hudud, in the State of Kelantan. As PAS has no representation in the Sabah state assembly, the split initially does not affect the opposition as only PKR and DAP (who later forms a new alliance Pakatan Harapan in 2016) together with STAR formed the opposition bloc. However several MLA for PKR and DAP later exited the party and either becoming independent, or forming/joining new party such as Sabah opposition leader Lajim Ukin who formed Parti Harapan Rakyat Sabah. Several UMNO Sabah members also exited the party in 2016, following the sacking of UMNO vice-president Shafie Apdal who later formed Parti Warisan Sabah.