'Mustapha responsible for altering Sabah's demography'

SABAH RCI Former Sabah chief minister Mustapha Harun was the man who started the idea of altering Sabah’s electoral demography in a bid to topple the PBS-led state government, the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on immigrants heard today.

Mat Swadi Awi testified at the Kota Kinabalu Court Complex this afternoon that the late Mustapha (left) had tasked him with distributing new voters in constituencies where Usno was weak.

“My job was to increase the number of Muslim votes in constituencies where Usno was weak.

“Not all of them were immigrants, some were voters from the military, police or teachers from peninsula Malaysia,” said Swadi who was then working at Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Berhad in Sabah.

Usno had ruled Sabah from 1967 until 1975 before being ousted by breakaway party Berjaya, which was in power until 1985.

However, PBS, perceived to be a non-Muslim-majority party, came to power in 1985, to the chagrin of both Berjaya and Usno.

“Mustapha complained that Berjaya and Usno were divided (among Muslim voters), so to increase the vote for Usno is to ‘nationalise’ these immigrants,” said Swadi.

Swadi said in 1987, Mustapha told him of his plans and had conveyed this to then-home minister Megat Junid Megat Ayub (left), who then received approval from then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

However, Swadi conceded that this was only Mustapha’s words and he had no proof that Megat Junid had actually received approval from Mahathir.

Throughout the operation until 1990, Swadi said he was in contact with Mustapha and Megat Junid.

Swadi explained that he was based in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur where he received some 20,000 photocopies of blue identity cards.

“I keyed this information into a database and analysed in which constituencies they should be distributed.

“After that, I would hand over this information to the Election Commission (for them to register as voters in said constituencies),” he said.

However, Swadi said he withdrew from the project when he found out that it had escalated to issuing the same identity card numbers to different people.

[More to follow]