14,000 'foreigners' in Penang's state electoral roll...

Penang PAS alleges it has detected about 14,000 'foreigners' in the state electoral roll and has launched an investigation into the matter so that a report can be filed with the Election Commission soon. State PAS Youth secretary Afnan Hamimi Taib Azamudden said the alleged irregularities were detected by the party's election committee over the week.

He added that the party has its own computer system which has been able to detect the said number of foreigners or permanent residents with the middle number '71' in their identity cards.

"The number of this kind of voters in the electoral roll is very high and sudden. Also the controversy over Mismah has made us very suspicious," he told Malaysiakini today.

Recently, Malaysiakini exposed a case where an individual named Mismah - was initially listed as a PR holder but was included in the latest update to the country's electoral rolls. Her status was however changed to full citizenship just hours after the issue made the headlines.

The Election Commission clarified that it was a mere "technical glitch" where the National Registration Department had failed to update its data despite Mismah having received full citizenship since January this year.

Mismah however denied any irregularity in the granting of her Malaysian citizenship.

PAS had earlier pointed out that checks conducted in Selangor, Perak, Penang, Johor, Kelantan and Terengganu yielded similar cases where PR holders were registered as voters, with at least 1,100 identified in Selangor alone.

On Aug 4, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng claimed that the state saw a sudden surge of 32,000 voters in just three months, while 6,000 had been dropped due to death and change of address.

He added that among others, the Batu Maung state constituency, currently held by state exco member Abdul Malik Kassim from PKR saw a shocking increase of 1,400 postal votes.

On Aug 9, the PAS Penang election department revealed it had found 237 "suspicious" names in the electoral roll.

The findings revealed several inconsistencies including voters with two identity cards with different names, different people with similar names and similar ID numbers, as well as those with similar names with different birthdates, registered as voters in two different areas.

Meant to divert attention

Meanwhile, Afnan Hamimi said the controversy over the ban on use of loudspeakers for the recital of verses from the Quran by the Penang Fatwa Council before dawn prayers was planned to divert attention from irregularities revealed in the electoral rolls.

He urged the debate be stopped and more focus be placed on the "issue of betrayal" by certain quarters who had compromised the future of the country into the hands of foreigners through dubious practices involving the MyKad and the electoral roll.

The Penang Fatwa Council had been criticised for allowing the state government under Lim to 'interfere' in the matter.

Lim, however, had denied any involvement and this was duly confirmed by Mufti Hassan Ahmad in a recent press conference.

Afnan Hamimi added the Election Commission had admitted that it was unable to prepare a completely clean electoral roll as demanded by Bersih 2.0.

source:malaysiakini

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