Dirty and violent election in Tapah, claims candidate

PKR’s Tapah GE13 candidate claims there were several cases of political violence and electoral fraud which resulted in him losing the contest to incumbent M Saravanan.

PETALING JAYA: Defeated general election candidate K Vasantha Kumar strongly believes that PKR has enough reasons to seek for a re-election in the Tapah parliamentary seat.

The constituency, he said, had recorded the highest number of incidences of political violence and electoral fraud.

Vasantha Kumar has himself lodged 10 police reports since parliament dissolved until GE13 on May 5.

Vasantha Kumar, who contested on a PKR ticket, stood against incumbent Barisan Nasional-MIC candidate M Saravanan. Saravanan eventually retained the seat by 7,927 votes

Vasantha Kumar told FMT today that among his major concerns were the fact that ballot papers were found outside the designated ballot boxes, and that state and parliamentary ballot papers were discovered in the same container.

He also said that seven containers of ballot papers were missing during the announcement of the results and there were insufficient and incomplete Form 14s.

“The results for the Tapah parliamentary seat was only announced at 1am the next day as according to the Election Commission there wasn’t sufficient information to announce the results.”

“There were lots of issues on incomplete and insufficient Form 14s until 12 midnight.

“I was chased out from the tallying centre by the FRU personnel, however the BN candidate Saravanan was allowed inside with all the polling agents,” Vasantha Kumar recalled.

Fraud in counting centre?
He claimed that within an hour after he was “chased out” of the counting centre, the results were announced that Saravanan had won the election.

“The issue which earlier couldn’t be settled for hours, was sorted out quickly in just an hour with the presence of the BN’s candidate” Vasantha Kumar claimed.

Besides the electoral fraud, Vasantha Kumar and team also faced issues on political violence throughout the electoral campaign.

“Tapah has the most number of police cases on electoral fraud and political violence which includes the murder of my political aide. All these should qualify the seat for a re-election,” said Vasantha Kumar, a  former ISA Hindraf detainee.

The aide, K Murugan had gone missing on May 1 and his remains were found on May 5 in a pond in Bemban Industrial Park, Batu Gajah.

“His hands and legs were tied with wires and the post mortem revealed that Murugan had died of blunt force trauma to the head,” said Vasantha Kumar.

“We believe that the murder was politically motivated as he was threatened by MIC supporters,” he added.

In addition, he also complained about the challenges his party faced during the campaign period.

He said in Chenderiang, RELA unit officials were placed at the entrance of an Orang Asli settlement to guard against any opposition candidates entering the village to campaign.

When asked what his next course of action would be, Vasantha Kumar said he was leaving it to the party to file an election petition and sought police assistance for the cases involving political violence.