PETALING JAYA - PKR has denied that its ongoing party elections had been compromised following claims ballot papers were being sold to ensure some leaders get elected.
Its secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail refuted activist Haris Ibrahim’s allegation that 1,000 unmarked ballot papers left over from last week could be bought and reused by ordinary members in the next phase of the country’s first direct party elections.
Haris, who is not a PKR member, had highlighted the incident today in his popular blog, the People’s Parliament.
“The party would like to inform all members and competing candidates that the ballot papers from last week cannot be used again this week nor next week,” Saifuddin announced in an emergency news conference at the party headquarters.
He stressed that PKR had introduced four safeguards to counter such attempts and uphold the integrity of the election process for all the top posts, including the hotly-contested deputy presidency..
Foremost among the measures was the serialisation of the ballots, he said as he indicated to the numbers on to the top right corner of a sample sheet he was holding.
He explained that each division would be given a limited set of serialised ballot papers that could not be used by any other division.
Saifuddin added that the ballot papers were also colour-coded to distinguish the weekly vote-casting process.
“The white one was last week’s and the blue one is for this week,” he said and held up two differently-coloured ballot sheets to illustrate his explanation.
“Next week will be a different colour,” he added, without disclosing the hue.
The ballot papers are also stamped by the party’s election officers at the division level just before they are handed out to the voters.
Only stamped ballots will be counted as valid, he said. Different-coloured inks are used for added security.
To demonstrate that the election process is fully transparent and fair, each competing candidate is allowed to send a representative of their choice to monitor both the ballot casting and counting process.
The representatives are also required to sign on the tally sheets to verify the results, number of ballot papers issued, number of votes cast and number of spoilt votes, together with the election officer.
“This system is very transparent,” Saifuddin stressed, and was echoed by incumbent president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and her outgoing deputy, Syed Husin Ali who were both present at the news conference.
Saifuddin said there were two likely sources to the leak, when asked how the allegations came about.
The first was that eligible voters had collected their ballot papers from the voting hall and left without casting their votes.
“Voting is not compulsory,” the Machang MP said.
The second possibility was that the election officers had failed to properly dispose of the expired ballot sheets, after wrapping up the weekly voting process.
Saifuddin said a total of 87 divisions had already cast their votes, including nine from Sabah this weekend, and the party was moving smoothly to the final round next week.
Quizzed over the recent last-minute change of tallying centres for the Libarat division and whether there were complaints from the candidates, Saifuddin explained it was because they were required to leave the Girl Guides headquarters in Sandakan that had been used as the voting centre.
But he added there were no complaints because the election observers representing the candidates had agreed to move the tally centre to Hotel Sand Bay, located 3km away.
Saifuddin added the voter turnout this weekend had increased to some 12 per cent, an improvement compared to the previous weekend’s seven per cent.
He declined to elaborate further and said he will announce the official results of the weekend’s votes at a separate news conference tomorrow. - Malaysian Insider
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