Home minister faces two election petitions

Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has been accused of buying votes with cash and rice.

PETALING JAYA: Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is facing two separate election petitions against him for alleged bribery, overspending and illegal employment while campaigning for the Bagan Datok parliamentary seat.

The petitions, filed yesterday by Perak PKR leader Madhi Hasan and Azmi Sulaiman at the Ipoh High Court, accuse him of bribing voters with cash and rice; spending more than the maximum RM200,000 allocated under the Election Offences Act 1954 for campaigning; and of illegally employing individuals to campaign for him.

According to the petitions, Hutang Melintang state assemblyman R Supramaniam had handed out five bags of rice weighing 1kg each and RM100 to every audience member holding coupons at a Majlis Mesra Rakyat event on April 19, 2013.

The Hutang Melitang state seat falls under the Bagan Datuk constituency.

In a video screened to the media, allegedly taken by an audience member, Zahid could be seen asking the crowd if they wished to become a BN campaign worker, to which they unanimously cried “yes”.

“Barisan Nasional voters, Barisan Nasional campaign workers, we must go early (to vote). Aunties, sisters, cook your rice early…you need not purchase any rice, Barisan Nasional has provided us with rice because we are officers,” said Ahmad Zahid, in the video.

Commenting on this, lawyer Edmund Bon, who is representing Madhi, said: “In his speech, although Ahmad Zahid supposedly said that this event was about appointing BN campaign workers, what he did was actually bribery and violates the law.”

“There were about 1,000 audience members, which means for that event alone, he spent up to RM100,000 and gave out 5,000 bags of rice. This is bribery, and it is enough to set aside the election results,” he added.

Meanwhile, in a separate video uploaded onto Ahmad Zahid’s personal YouTube account, the home minister could be seen claiming he had 24,000 BN campaign workers at his disposal.

Adzmi’s lawyer, Sin Yew, said this was a violation of Section 21 of the Election Offences Act, which deems the employments of individuals other than one election agent, one polling agent and “a reasonable number of clerks and messengers” for the purpose of campaigning to be illegal.

He also surmised that Ahmad Zahid had appointed the 24,000 officers with tactics similar to the ones depicted in the first video – through cash and rice.

“So if he has 24,000 officers, and he has given out RM100 to each one, that means he has spent RM2.4 million, when the maximum allowed for campaigning is RM200,000. We are saying that this is an illegal practice,” he added.

‘Voters, not workers’

Meanwhile, PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli said that Ahmad Zahid was merely claiming he had 24,000 officers as a loophole to escape from being charged for bribing voters.

“But he has been caught – if he says it was not bribery because they are officers, then we can ask him how much did he spend for the 24,000 officers he himself professed to have.

“So that means we have a reason to file the election petition, regardless,” said the Pandan MP.

But Rafizi said “any sane person” would realise that the 24,000 people were voters and not campaign workers, citing as proof the fact that Ahmad Zahid received only 17,176 votes during the May 5 polls.

However, Bon noted that election petitions generally did not favour the petitioners, and most of these petitions do not go to full trial.