More irregularities as EC continues ‘patch-up’ job

Bersih highlighted more irregularities in the latest electoral roll and repeated its demand for the EC's immediate resignation.

KUALA LUMPUR: Electoral watchdog Bersih today highlighted that there were 15,000 voters in Sabah who were re-registered in Selangor as well, according to the gazetted electoral roll of April this year.

It revealed this while highlighting several other irregularities which it spotted in the gazetted roll.

Specifically, Bersih found 15,520 voters from Sabah and 8,585 voters from Sarawak re-registered in Selangor.

When asked if these could just be the case of voters who have requested for a change of address, Bersih steering committee member, A Subramaniam Pillay was sceptical.

“The point is, these names should not be appearing twice [in the gazetted roll], before re-registering in an area. The EC should first delete [these names] from the list.

“The computer program has as such caught this. Why do we spend so much of money on a programming system which cannot detect such elementary issues?” he said.

When asked for specific cases of these re-registered voters, Bersih said that more information will be given in due time.

Other irregularities highlighted today were:

• 7, 841 voters were registered under Code 71 in Selangor alone. This code is used to refer to citizens born outside of Malaysia.

• Numerous cases of more than 15 people registered under a single address.

• In the last quarter of 2011, no deaths were registered in Sabak Bernam, Sungai Besar, Hulu Selangor and Tanjong Karang. (Such cases will be registered under Code 33.) However, a check with National Registration Department (NRD) revealed that death certificates were issued in these constituencies.

No deaths

Elaborating on the irregularities, Subramaniam said that it was highly dubious that there were no deaths in three months in a constituency.

“The data base really needs to be cleared… the EC is merely doing patch-up work here and there when the whole roll needs to be cleaned.

“If a bank’s database is this dirty, all of you won’t put money in the bank because all of your money won’t be secured,” he said.

Bersih steering committee member Maria Chin Abdullah, who was also present, said that the point was that these irregularities still persisted.

“These irregularities should not occur… the EC says it is cleaning up the electoral roll but we are still discovering this kind of fraud,” she said.

Bersih repeated its demand for the EC officer bearers to resign immediately because the integrity of the electoral roll has been compromised.

“Instead of securing the one person, one vote, the EC has disenfranchised the rakyat’s votes through its complicity in the fraud shown above,” said the committee’s co-chairperson A Samad Said.

The irregularities have been taken from a study currently underway by political scientist Ong Kian Ming. The study is called Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (MERAP).