Nurul’s men arrested for ‘impersonation’

'This is intimidation! It's ridiculous!' says the Lembah Pantai MP.

PETALING JAYA: Police today arrested two men working for Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar over allegation that they were impersonating as Election Commission (EC) officers.

The two, in their early 20s, were volunteers for Nurul assisting her conduct a door-to-door voter survey in her constituency over the weekend.

However, they were hauled up this afternoon following a police report by a local Umno leader claiming that the two were masquerading as EC officers and were distributing “malicious” brochures.

“It was just a normal survey exercise that we and all other parties, including Umno, does. I am astounded and upset at how fearful Barisan Nasional has become,” Nurul told FMT.

She said the two workers were stopped by Umno men at about 2pm today and were forcefully brought to the Pantai police station on the pretext of making a “citizens’ arrest”.

“I got a call in Parliment about the incident… Impersonating as government officers? What a load of rubbish! I gave them [the volunteers] the authority [to act on my behalf] and they have the letters.”

“Umno has been doing this work and we never interfered… this is intimidation! It’s ridiculous!”

Nurul said some 20 Umno men were shouting and hurling abuses at her at the police station when she arrived. She claimed that the police did not bother to stop them.

She said she has never seen such a situation in her four years as an MP, claiming that there was “something BN wants to hide”.

Nurul lodged a report herself against the Umno men but was unable to post bail for the two volunteers because the police still wanted to question them.

She said the two volunteers had the relevant documents and wore clear name tags representing her office.

“If it was a voter registration drive, we need an EC officer, but this is not. Everything was legal.”

It was learnt that Lembah Pantai Umno secretary and BN coordinator Mohamad Sazali Kamilan was the person who lodged the initial report, claiming that Nurul’s men had misrepresented themselves.

Meanwhile, Brickfields district police chief Wan Abdul Bari Wan Abdul Khalid confirmed the arrests of the two but declined to give more details.

“We received a complaint of impersonation and we acted. We are investigating,” he told FMT.