GE 13: OPPORTUNITY A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME

By : KIM QUEK

ON THE DAY of an anticipated major announcement by Najib Razak on the terms of reference for the proposed royal commission of inquiry on illegal immigrants in Sabah, it is pertinent to take stock of the gravity of this looming menace in the state.

In the past four decades, the population of Sabah has increased by almost five folds (from 650,000 in 1970 to 3.12 million in 2010), much of it consists of illegal immigrants or their descendants.

Such population implosion has not only created unbearable strain on Sabah's social and economic fabric, but it has also stripped the original Sahahans of their sovereignty, in that a large chunk of its present electorate are made up of these illegal immigrants who have been illicitly granted voting rights through a massive clandestine operation known as ‘Project M' (M stands for Mahathir).

This group of illegal voters, known as phantom voters, has now become the kingmaker, who can tilt the balance of power not only in Sabah in the coming GE 13 elections, but also in Putrajaya. This is because a major win by BN in the state, as it has done in the past (thanks to the phantom voters, of course), will help UMNO to ward off Pakatan Rakyat's challenge through a simple parliamentary majority.

While many have heard of the phenomenon of the Sabah phantom voters, perhaps not so many are familiar with the hows and whys of it. For this reason, we should perhaps seek enlightenment from justice Muhammad Kamil Awang's judgment annulling the Likas election in Sabah in June 2001.

Court judgment

In a rare display of judicial independence under former PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad's rule, Muhammad in his judgment chronicled details of a massive illicit campaign initiated by Mahathir to convert illegal immigrants into voters through the unlawful issue of blue ICs and the unlawful registration of these IC holders into the electoral rolls.

These details of illegal activities presented in court included many instances of witnesses' testimonies, affidavits and incriminating government and political party correspondence and circulars.

These evidence point conclusively to the involvement of the National Registration Department (NRD), Election Commission (EC), police and UMNO high ranking officials in a joint conspiracy to massively convert illegal Filipino and Indon migrants into citizens and voters. In fact, this voter scam was so serious that it was described by Muhammad as only the "tip of a growing iceberg".

sabah rough estimates of foreign born voters 200606Muhammad's judgment, which has not been disputed to date, also gave details of how repeated official complaints from the opposition parties on such fraudulent practices had been consistently stonewalled (concealed) by the authorities all the way up to the highest levels of government, including a rejection for debate in Parliament.

In fact, there were indisputable evidence that even the highest authorities in NRD and EC had been incriminated in this phantom voters scam.

What motivated these highest civil servants to commit such treasonous acts against the Sabah state in unlawfully admitting these hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants as citizens and voters?

Personal gains can be ruled out, as these are more than offset by the heavy punishment that can be meted out for such high crimes of treason against the country.

UMNO political strategy

The only plausible explanation is that this is the political strategy of the UMNO leadership to regain political power in Sabah from the Kadazan (mainly Christian) dominated PBS. The latter has won every Sabah election since 1986 save the last one in 1999.

It does not take a genius to find out why. Until the last election in 1999, the Sabah electorate had been such that non-Muslim Kadazans and Chinese overwhelmingly outnumbered the Malays (all Muslims) and other Muslims.

With Umno's heavy emphasis on racial and religious privileges, which alienated the non-Malays and non-Muslims, there was virtually no chance that the UMNO dominated BN could unseat the PBS government unless there was a drastic restructuring of the ratio of Muslim dominated electorates to non-Muslim dominated electorates and re-drawing of the electoral boundaries (gerrymandering).

And this is exactly what happened. Through the massive infusion of illegal Philippine and Indonesian immigrants (who are all Muslims) into the electoral roll, as well as gerrymandering, Muslim majority constituencies in Sabah in the 1999 electoral roll had suddenly and inexplicably increased from 30 percent to 50 percent of the total constituencies of 48 within a short period of five years.

Given this numerical boost, BN swept the 1999 Sabah election, after employing every dirty election trick available under the sun, including the usual blatant abuses of government agencies and resources and the onesided mass media which was completely under the thumb of the ruling UMNO-controlled coalition.

With these phantom voters as bedrock of support, UMNO has dominated political power in Sabah ever since. Until the last general election in 2008, every UMNO minister liked to brag the opposition can never defeat them at the polls.

Chance of a lifetime

If the coming announcement by Najib is to have any meaning to Sabahans, the proposed RCI must aimed to convince the voters at firstly restoring their democratic rights by purging the electoral roll of phantoms, and secondly solving their social and economic plight through proper management of these illegal immigrants, including phased repatriation and effective measures to prevent further influx.

UMNO has never been so vulnerable of losing power as it is now.

Hence, it is the chance of a lifetime for Sabahans to demand and get what is due to them - a fair solution to the illegal MyKad immigrants and the ever-present phantom voters menace. There is absolutely no need for them to compromise.

As the situation is getting hopeless by the day, the only recourse left to the Sabahans and even the Sarawakians is to vote the other political coalition, namely, the Pakatan Rakyat, into power.

The facts speak for itself. The Sabahans should not be fooled again by BN. It is now or never.Wake up to the reality that even your own native leaders in BN took all of you for a ride to nowhere. Get rid of them once and for all and rest assured things will be different and better for all native Sabahans..

The crux of the matter is the government is run by crooks

Only a change in government will bring the criminals to justice .Their horrific acts are traitorious Their punishment should reflect the gravity of the crime. We owe it to the country to bring those responsible to justice. History will not be kind to these UMNO people especially Mahathir who had basically behaved 'traitoriously' in their efforts to regain power and now the people have to deal with it.

Nothing much will come out of the RCI. UMNO will make sure of it. Mahathir already commented that it is useless. Like the Teoh Beng Hock RCI, it's just another whitewash to protect UMNO and Mahathir, the chief architect responsible for selling out Sabah to illegals.

Only a dictatorial regime will be able to successfully carry out such a massive clandestine exercise to cheat the people of Sabah. Because of this fraud on the people, all elections from 1999 onwards are technically null and void. It is also clear now why the UMNOnised BN regime is so fearful of Bersih and the people's demand for free and fair elections.

That is why UMNO has always been confident of winning the general election because of their "fixed deposit" in Sabah.

In Peninsular Malaysia, even if UMNO gets less than 1/2 of the votes, they will still win by a 2/3rd majority because the people of Sabah voted for them. It will be no different this time, as with the cheating and political maneuvring undertaken with the help of the EC, UMNO will be sure to win again.

The opposition has to garner at least 2/3rds of the votes to win by even a simple majority. It's an uphill battle and it's not going to be easy. Let us hope Sabahans will not be fooled again. The only way to change things in Sabah is to change the state and federal governments. They must help every Malaysian citizen to destroy the hegemony of UMNO's control in the electoral process. - Sabahkini