Mystery woman at MIC polls

A defeated candidate says an unknown person called Mala was seen counting and tabulating votes.

PETALING JAYA: A candidate who lost in his bid for a vice president’s post in last Saturday’s MIC election has demanded that the party leadership disclose the identity of a “mysterious woman going by the name of Mala” who allegedly counted and tabulated the votes.

He also alleged that Mala was a friend of the wife of a party leader whom he did not name.

“Why was she there?” he asked.

“The election committee got some students to count votes. But then we had this woman, who was called Mala doing the job as well. We understand she is a close friend of an MIC leader’s wife. None of the candidates knew who she was.”

He said the leader’s wife had, three days before the elections, checked into the hotel where the polls were held and held “meeting after meeting” with delegates, telling them to vote for certain individuals.

“She also used a Wanita MIC leader and a newly elected central working committee member to distribute the list of candidates allegedly preferred by the president at the meetings.”

He alleged that Mala was with the leader’s wife much of the time.

The party election was marred by allegations of vote manipulation after former youth chiefs T Mohan and SA Vigneswaran openly declared that the polls were not free and fair.

They alleged, according to Tamil newspapers, that certain individuals had manipulated the votes. The polls saw eight candidates vying for the three vice presidential seats and 88 candidates for the 23 central working committee seats.

Former veep S Sothinathan, incumbent M Saravanan and party’s treasurer-general, Jaspal Singh, won the vice presidential race after the first and second vote counts. But after a third count, Jaspal was pipped by Johor Baharu division chief KS Balakrishnan by more than 20 votes.

Ballot papers in toilet

“During the first two counts only Jaspal’s and Balakrishnan’s votes were counted,” said the candidate who spoke to FMT. “Jaspal won by two and four votes respectively.

“Then other candidates wanted all the votes recounted. But the election steering committee could not reopen the ballots, which had been put under lock and key by then.

“They said keys to the ballots were with a prominent MIC leader, who was not even in the election steering committee.

“Why was this person holding the key to the ballots? They tried to locate him for the keys. During this time, this leader had actually taken some unmarked ballot papers into a toilet near the counting centre. He had placed two Rela members outside the toilet to prevent anyone from going in.

“He came out after 20 minutes with the keys. The election steering committee then did the recount. On the third count, Balakrishnan took the third vice-president’s spot, beating Jaspal. Saravanan got angry and demanded a fourth and final recount for all candidates. Then all the numbers changed.”

Students blamed

He said the final vote count did not tally with the number of delegates who voted.

Referring to statements by party leaders that blamed the students for the discrepancy, he said the students “did only what they were told to do”.

He alleged that the use of students as vote counters was part of a ploy to manipulate the results.

“All these years the MIC headquarters staff were entrusted to count and tally votes. Why weren’t they asked to do the same in this election. Why bring in students who did not know the election process?

“Who made this arrangement? It all points to only a selected few in the party leadership. It is an open secret as to who is behind this whole fiasco. If they do not rectify the polls, then we will definitely come out and name this leader and his cronies for making MIC a laughing stock.

“Umno conducted its polls with over 100,000 voters and it went on without any major glitch. We had 1,400 delegates and we messed up because of this leader.”

MIC secretary general A Sakthivel confirmed today that the party leadership had received appeals against the election results. He said the election committee would deal with them.