PAS wants RCI to probe IC-giving ‘syndicate’

By Shazwan Mustafa Kamal

April 05, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — PAS today called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) to look into claims that top government officials are involved in a syndicate which grants foreigners immediate Malaysian citizenship in exchange for support towards Barisan Nasional.

PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu said his party had irrefutable "proof" to support these allegations, and that the matter was "too serious" to be ignored.

"We are looking at the dirtiest voter registration ever. There is a high-level task force, syndicate that dishes out identification cards for foreigners to become voters and citizens.

"An RCI is needed to investigate this. It is too serious," Sabu (picture) told reporters, and accused top Election Commission (EC) officials of also being a part of the "organised syndicate."

PAS vice-president Datuk Mahfuz Omar had highlighted the matter in Parliament yesterday, and had alleged that top government officials were part of this group which helped foreigners obtain Malaysian citizenship.

Mohamad, popularly known as Mat Sabu said today he received information that the syndicate's operational headquarters were currently based in Selangor.

"We know the address of the office, and we know that Selangor is the focus of manipulation of voter registration," he stressed.

The PAS leader said that the Islamist party would keep on making exposes and revealing names of those allegedly involved in the "task force" if the government did not take any immediate action.

"We have names, addresses, office...we are waiting to see what the government does about this.

"Is it any surprise the rise of registration of voters in different areas in Selangor are unbalanced?" he asked.

Electoral reforms group Bersih yesterday confirmed April 28 as the date for “Bersih 3.0”, its third rally for free and fair elections, which will go on from 2pm to 4pm at Dataran Merdeka.

It cited the Parliamentary Select Committee's (PSC) failure to deal with specific discrepancies in the electoral roll as one of the main reasons for having its third rally.

These include duplicate voters, overly large numbers of voters registered to a single address, the existence of deceased voters, and a suspicious spike in the number of civilian and postal voters, among many other similar irregularities.