Only forensic audit can confirm election committee’s explanation, says PKR man

 

Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak says PKR must set an example of transparency in its own polls, before demanding the same on the national stage.

PETALING JAYA: Only a forensic audit can confirm the explanation by PKR’s election committee over the “missing” votes at the party’s recently concluded elections, a PKR leader said.

Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak, in reiterating his call for such an audit, said it was a matter of transparency or the “alarming lack of it”.

Votes collected are kept for days before being counted and announced by the committee, he said.

Farhash added that there were no witnesses representing the candidates or any third party present during the counting.

And this practice alone, he said, gave credence to allegations of manipulation.

He then called for the party to do away with such questionable processes in the future.

“If we are demanding for transparent and fair elections on the national stage, we should be seen to be setting an example of transparency within our own party,” Farhash told FMT.

“It is simple then. We just need the forensic audit to be done to prove what the committee is claiming.”

Last night PKR’s election committee (JPP) head Dr Zaliha Mustafa rejected Farhash’s claim that over 26,000 votes were not accounted for in the polls.

Zaliha said not all 147,000 voters had cast their ballots to elect the central leadership, adding that many voters decided to vote for leaders at the divisional level only.

She said this after Farhash argued that Rafizi Ramli and Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, the two contenders for the deputy presidency, had secured a total of 119,030 votes between them.

In response, the former Perak PKR chief said this was too big an issue for Zaliha and her committee to ignore or take lightly.

“Many candidates have reported missing votes. It is not just for the deputy president’s post, which I only used as an example.

“Are you telling me that members across the country somehow decided to vote for some posts and not others?”

Farhash first made the call for a forensic audit last Sunday after the unofficial results of the polls published on the party’s website showed he lost the race for the Gombak division head’s post to Selangor PKR chief Amirudin Shari. He was reported to have obtained 1,215 votes against Amirudin’s 1,858 votes. - FMT