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Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Opposition says study only confirms their own findings on advance, postal voters

The Merdeka Centre, which revealed that the Barisan Nasional could not have formed the government if it was not for the controversial postal and advanced votes, only confirmed the opposition’s findings.
Parti Keadilan Rakyat strategic director Rafizi Ramli (pic) disclosed that the party had carried out its own analysis and the result was similar.

"We knew this all along. Our study showed that at least 30 parliamentary seats were won by BN because of advance and early voting," said the Pandan MP.

The BN government, he said, cannot deny that the advance and postal voting had come in as a huge advantage to them.

The Merdeka Centre study had showed that two MIC Cabinet Ministers - Datuk Seri S.Subramaniam  (Segamat) and Datuk Seri G. Palanivel (Cameron Highlands) - would have lost their parliamentary seats without the advance and postal voting and several seats in Johor and the Federal Territory would have also fallen to Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

The advance and postal votes alone gave BN victory in 22 parliamentary seats. Without those 22 seats, BN would have tied with opposition PR at 111 seats.

“There is nothing that can explain why the BN got more than 80% of advance and postal votes. It is absurd and it is almost like a cartoon-like situation," Rafizi said today.

DAP's Zairil Khir Johari said that the study was further proof that the BN government had no legitimacy, noting that advance and postal voting was something only the BN benefited from.

"Not only did they (BN) not get the majority of votes, but they would have lost had they not benefited from the advance voting."

While reiterating that BN's win through advance and postal voting was hardly surprising, both Zairil and Rafizi asserted that the opposition has been rallying for it to be abolished as it allowed opportunities for fraud.

"Both voting processes have been historically marred with irregularities," Zairil, the Bukit Bendera MP, observed.

Rafizi, meanwhile, referred to police reports, which were lodged by the party's counting agents right after the May 5 polls, claiming fraud that had happened during the advance voting process.

"The issue was that the ballot box was left in the police lock-ups and the whole control of these boxes was placed under the police and the Election Commission. We did not see it for five days," he said, accusing the BN of exploiting the voting process to its advantage.

In Malacca, PKR's counting agent Abu Hussin Tamby had claimed to have seen about seven to eight individuals donning EC uniforms counting the ballots in a police lock-up.

According to his police report lodged on May 2, the ballot box for early voting was brought from the early voting centre at the Lubok China police station to the lock-up at the Alor Gajah district police headquarters on April 30. This is despite the EC setting rules that the advance voting ballots be counted on election day on May 5.

In another case in Gerik, PKR counting agent Shairi Md Tajuddin had alleged that a postal ballot bag from a polling centre in Pengkalan Hulu did not arrive at the counting centre by the given time on May 5 and blamed the delay on the EC.

While blaming the delay on the EC, which resulted in the postal ballot bag being rejected, Shahiri claimed this was done on purpose to ensure a win for Umno.

"I believe this is an offence that was committed on purpose by the EC for the purpose of fraud in ensuring a win for Umno and BN in the Gerik parliamentary seat and the Pengkalan Hulu state seat," he said in his report.

"I am actually surprised BN did not win with a bigger margin as these things are designed to favour BN," he scoffed.

Former deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah agreed that "winning with postal votes is not a great way to win".

Saifuddin, who lost the Temerloh parliamentary seat to Nasruddin Hassan of PAS by a narrow 1,007 majority, said it was important that the BN take note of the voting patterns revealed by Merdeka Centre.

"I believe that the Merdeka Centre's study is something we need to look at seriously. There is some truth there and we need to work at it.

"BN cannot rely on advance and postal voting anymore,” he said.

Bersih co-chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said the study on voting pattern only confirmed the election watchdog's belief that the EC failed the people.

"But we think an open inquiry should be held to respond to the study," she said, adding that the "figures speak for themselves".

Ambiga said the report was very troubling, especially when the number of postal voters had increased and the categories were expanded, adding that Bersih had objected to the postal voting system and wanted the numbers reduced.

The Election Commission (EC) had earlier said that there were some 372,000 advance or postal voters and they included security forces, EC workers and the media.

"But it fell on deaf ears. The postal voting system was open to abuse," Ambiga said

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