Defeated PKR Gombak division chief candidate Farhash Wafa Salvador Rizal Mubarak has deemed the official results of the party polls as “unconvincing”.
This follows the announcement of the PKR’s official results after the party leadership polls that took place last month.
Farhash (above) claimed that while it was not a disappointing result, it was a rejection of the party’s principles when “clearly, a non-transparent process” was not resolved with a convincing correction.
“From the beginning, the party’s election process, especially the secret ballot counting process, was highly questionable as they were very much open to manipulation, but the answers that have been given by PKR’s election committee were not convincing at all,” he said in a statement yesterday.
Farhash, who is a former aide to party president Anwar Ibrahim, claimed that PKR’s election committee received more than 1,800 complaints following the unveiling of the unofficial poll results on May 29.
He added that payment must accompany each lodged complaint.
According to Farhash, most lodged reports were concerned with the online voting process and mechanism using the Adil app - which was highly disputed by the stakeholders.
The official results of the PKR top leadership elections were released yesterday, after a clean-up of the votes based on the findings of a forensic audit.
A chief critic of the poll’s outcome, Farhash, had officially lost the race as Gombak division chief against Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari.
Farhash was contesting for one of the four PKR vice-president posts and the Gombak division chief post.
He previously claimed that party election committee members counted online votes in the recent polls, without the presence of any representative from candidates or from a third party, to ensure check-and-balance.
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Tampering by ‘irresponsible parties’
Farhash had also raised a red flag over the delay in announcing vote counts, which he said could have been performed faster as the party uses an online voting system.
In a statement released in conjunction with the official party results, PKR election committee director Zaliha Mustafa acknowledged that a forensic audit had discovered attempts to tamper with the results by “irresponsible parties”.
However, she said, the audit firm had suggested that the results should be cleaned up, which the committee carried out in accordance with the digital analysis’ findings.
“However (the clean-up) did not affect the results for a majority of candidates, be it at the central or division levels,” Zaliha said.
Farhash pointed out that most objections to the poll results did not even question whether the system was hacked or not but were focused on the likelihood of manipulation by internal parties.
He said there were requests for this to be resolved easily and transparently with a total recount of all votes, both physical and online, held in the presence of witnesses comprising the candidates, their representatives and third parties.
“The request for this transparency was completely ignored. In fact, we found from internal sources in the party’s election committee that the forensic audit did not even touch on the online votes that caused this controversy.
“Even Zaliha is now seen as compromising to protect these non-transparent processes. So there is no need for her to talk about integrity because it does not exist in the context of this party’s election, and the application for transparency was rejected outright,” he said.
Farhash added that with the numerous unanswered questions on the issue right before the 15th general election, it might be good for Anwar to convince PKR members of the party’s commitment to upholding transparency, justice and integrity. - Mkini
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