Sabah DAP: Over 30pct foreigners in some seats

About 5.2 percent of over 946,442 Sabah voters are registered as being of Brunei, Filipino, Indonesian or Pakistani origin, and the proportion could as high as over a third in some constituencies, claims the Sabah DAP.

“The Election Commission (EC) should investigate whether these voters are the non-citizens who were given ICs and then allowed to vote,” said Sabah DAP publicity chief Chan Foong Hin (right) in a statement yesterday.

Citing data from the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (Merap), Chan said that there are 49,126 Sabah voters who registered themselves as of Brunei, Filipino, Indonesian or Pakistani ‘race’, but the actual number could be higher because they may have registered themselves as Malays.

He said most of Sabah’s 26 parliamentary constituencies have about a thousand of such voters.

However, he said constituencies such as Kimanis, Beaufort, Papar and Sipitang - all on the west coast of Sabah - have over 3,000 of these ‘dubious’ voters, with percentages higher than 10 percent of the electorate.

“Especially in Kimanis, where the Brunei, Filipino, Indonesian or Pakistani voters number 9,452 over the total of 25,744 voters, or 36.7 percent.

“It is seriously dubious and uncommon statistics,” he said.

He urged the government not to call for elections before the electoral roll is cleaned and the Royal Commission of Inquiry in Sabah has concluded its report.

By law, the elections must be held by June 28, which is two months after the Parliament’s mandate expires.