Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Alfred Jabu has held the Dayak-majority seat of Layar since 1974. PKR is now claiming that there may be phantom voters in the Barisan Nasional stronghold. – The Malaysian Insider pic, May 13, 2015.
An increase of more than 15% in new voters in a seat considered one of Sarawak Barisan Nasional stronghold has opposition PKR claiming some of them to be phantom voters.
PKR said the 644 new names on the electoral roll last year in the Dayak-majority seat of Layar, a constituency of 8,838 voters and held since 1974 by Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Alfred Jabu, saw "a lot of newly registered voters within less than a year”.
“Some of these names could be genuine, newly registered voters, or voters who had transferred their voting addresses back to Layar.
“However, we will not discount that some could be phantom voters, and so PKR is now aggressively checking for any strange names appearing in the localities of 28 polling districts in Layar,” Sarawak PKR information chief Vernon Kedit said in a statement.
Kedit, slated to contest the seat in the coming state election, said the discovery was made during a voter verification exercise last weekend.
He stated the verification, conducted with the help of volunteers from Kuala Lumpur and Kuching “was necessary as PKR Betong (division) found that there are many discrepancies between voters list of 2013 and the latest 2014 voter list”.
Kedit said there were other irregularities found which included the transfer of voters and unexplained removal of names.
“We discovered that 322 names that were voting in the general election of 2013 list in Layar have been removed and now do not appear in the latest 2014 list.
“When we checked these names against the Election Commission (EC) portal's online registration, we found that 109 voters had been transferred out of Layar,” Kedit said.
He said some were moved to neighbouring constituencies like Bukit Saban, Saribas or Engkilili while others to “faraway places like Baram and some even to West Malaysia”.
“We need to verify that these voters had indeed asked to be transferred or if they were moved without their knowledge.”
In a state where communication could be a real problem, Kedit said the transfer could make voting difficult for the voters as their polling centres could be “situated miles or hours away”.
“This would be devastating for many voters as they would not be able to cast their vote on polling day if they did not have transportation to go to their new polling stations, or are not in time to reach their new polling stations before balloting are officially closed at noon.”
Kedit also said 213 names from the 322 allegedly removed from the latest 2014 electoral list, were listed as "Record Not Found" in the EC online registration portal.
“(If) these people are presumed dead, can there have been so many deaths within a year in Layar?”
Nonetheless, Kedit said PKR would continue their verification for an explanation on the anomalies.
- TMI
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