Under-probe Sabah voter roll still legit, EC says

KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 – Sabah’s electoral roll containing 60,673 dubious entries is still legit and cannot be junked as the royal panel looking into the citizenship-for-votes controversy has yet to conclude any wrongdoing, the Election Commission (EC) said today.

An independent polls watchdog had highlighted this morning that Sabah’s gazetted electoral roll used for the 13th general election was plagued with a large number problems, such as incomplete addresses and voters who shared the same identity card (IC) numbers, months after a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) had exposed much irregularities in the naturalisaton process for immigrants.

“The list of registered voters raised in the RCI is still legit, besides no final decision has been reached.

“The RCI has yet to end and make its decision, how can we discard the electoral roll,” EC chief Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof told The Malaysian Insider.

He also said that the names on the EC’s roll were Malaysian citizens, adding that the voter list had been on public display for two weeks starting from January 17 and no objections had been recorded during that period.

“EC had displayed the list for two weeks, if they objected, it should have been made in that period.

“Why raise it now and make all sorts of accusations?” Abdul Aziz (picture) asked.

An official with polls watchdog, Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (MERAP) told a news conference today that 60,653 voters were registered in Sabah with incomplete addresses, 44 of them under a different gender, 193 under a different year of birth, and 123 under a state they were not born in.

“There should be some fundamental action taken to correct the electoral roll,” said MERAP research assistant Lee Wee Tak.

Lee pointed out that the highest number of registrations took place from 1990 to 1993 when Sabah was under the rule of then opposition party Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).

He alleged that the racial composition of the 60,673 registered voters is consistent with the testimony of a former Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) employee that the intent of “Project IC” was to increase the number of Muslim voters in Sabah to ensure they vote for Umno.

Lee also said the majority of these problematic voters are found in the parliamentary constituency of Silam.

Abdul Aziz said the election regulator did not have the authority to award citizenship and that election laws required it to register all voters who have the blue-coloured ICs denoting their Malaysian citizenship status.

“How they get the ICs or citizenship is not the EC’s job, when citizens bring the blue ICs to register as voters, we have to accept,” he said.

The RCI, led by the former chief judge of Sabah and Sarawak Tan Sri Steve Shim Lip Kiong, has pushed its public hearing dates to resume after the May 5 polls.

A total of 62 people have testified. The 10-day session will resume on May 20.

It was initially scheduled for between March 5 and 9, but was postponed following violent clashes between Malaysians and armed insurgents from a Filipino Muslim clan claiming historic ownership over Sabah.

Both Sabah and Sarawak are regarded as the ruling Barisan Nasional’s voter banks that have kept the 13-party coalition in power for half a century.

Some 13.3 million Malaysians are registered to vote in the 222 federal and 505 state seats in 12 states and three federal territories.