'Only 3 out of 56 dubious voters can be traced'

Out of the 56 foreign-born new voters registered in Kampung Melayu Majidee, Johor Bahru minus house numbers and street names, only three have been traced by PKR after door-to-door checks.

According to PKR national deputy secretary-general Steven Choong, based in Johor Bahru, the party had dispatched its members to the Malay village to verify the identities of those voters.

They discovered a squatter area in the village with neither house numbers nor street name.

"They could not find anyone on the list (of 56 dubious voters) but when they showed the list to the residents there, the residents could identify three of them, who had moved to another constituency, Johor Jaya," Choong (right) said when contacted yesterday.

They could not confirm the other names on the list, as resident there or had lived there before, he claimed.

"Bear in mind that this is a close-knit community, therefore it raises doubt whether they existed or not," he added.

The verification exercise was done after political researcher Ong Kian Ming recently detected in the electoral roll many new voters registered by government agencies (not the Election Commission) with code 71 in their identity numbers but without house numbers and street names.

Code 71 indicates that they were born outside Malaysia.

One of the areas identified by Ong with such voters is KampungMelayu Majidee, located in a heavily urbanised area in Johor Bahru.

All the 56 foreign-born new voters in that area registered in the last three quarters, do not have house numbers and street names, but this not so for 75 Malaysia-born new voters, except for one.

Ong had raised the question whether these dubious voters were given identity cards by the NRD to vote in the election, as the lack of complete addresses hampers political parties' ability to trace and verify if they are actually valid voters in their registered areas.

Choong shared the same view but conceded that many squatter areas, even in cities, have no addresses or street names as they have no legitimate land status.

Election Commission (EC) chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof had explained that the commission has no right to reject the registration of voters with incomplete and dubious addresses as long as they are in the record of the National Registration Department (NRD).

In another related development, Choong told Malaysiakini that he had received complaints from two voters yesterday morning that their addresses in the EC online database had been changed without their knowledge although the new addresses are still within the same constituency.

"He asked me why. I suspect it was purposely done so people cannot find them, causing difficulties for party campaigners during election time," he said.