60,000 dubious voters gave Sabah BN victory

KOTA KINABALU: A mechanic in Dongonggon township in Penampang district perhaps best summed up the disbelief that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition was about to extend its 50-year rule of Malaysia. Sabah joined the Federation of Malay in 1963.

Told in the wee hours of Monday morning that Lajim Ukin, the opposition’s sure-fire win candidate for the Beaufort parliamentary seat had lost in the 13th general election, he just grunted a very common crude vulgar word which reflected the revulsion felt by many for the ruling BN coalition and the methods used to hang on to power.

Sabahans may still be asking what went wrong but at the same time they also already know. It’s got nothing to do with them.

The more one looks at the numbers churned out by Sunday’s balloting and produced by the Election Commission, a government institution that has credibility problem, the more it seems to suggest that the Umno and Barisan Nasional fortress in Sabah is defended by a new force – immigrants.

Across the board in the vast state, Sabahans had turned out in droves, many with the mantra “Ini Kali lah” on their lips, in a bid to show the Umno-led BN coalition the door.

But, so it seems, did dubious voters who are still on the questionable electoral roll.

Sabah’s electoral rolls contained well over 60,000 dubious entries even though a Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) is investigating the citizenship-for-votes allegations that have lingered since the 1990s.

They are all legitimate voters for the time being though some have testified at the inquiry that they become citizens through dodgy, government-sponsored clandestine schemes.

No one in the present government wants anyone to query those rolls and the elections in a court of law.

Significant High Court ruling

It was done once but that was more than a decade ago. In 1999 the curious case of the “phantom voters” in Sabah came to light.

The High Court then ruled in 2001 that the 1999 state election result for the Likas constituency was null and void due to the presence of illegal voters in the rolls.

Former Sabah chief minister Yong Teck Lee, had to vacate his seat and a by-election was called.

Justice Muhammad Kamil Awang ruled that the “instances of non-citizens and phantom voters in the electoral roll as disclosed in the trial maybe the tip of the iceberg”.

“It could not be denied that the registration of voters in the Likas electoral roll was in contravention of the law.

ne including the government department is above the law,” he said, adding that it was common knowledge that an influx of illegal immigrants has plagued Sabah for years.

“The EC ought to be aware of the said influx, and when the said objections were raised, the EC should have held a public inquiry as prescribed by electoral laws.

“The exposure of fraudulent practices such as massive registration of phantom voters is time consuming.

“However, it has to be done if we wish to defend and preserve the meaningful practice of democracy in Malaysia.

“As custodians of free and fair elections, the SPR is duty bound to do it,” he said in his judgment.

What happened next was staggering.

Mahathir barred the judiciary

The government of then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad amended the Election Act to disallow the judiciary from reviewing the gazetted electoral roll after that landmark ruling.

The Federal Court in 2001 reaffirmed that a gazetted electoral roll is final and cannot be questioned in court.

Section 9A of the Election Act reads: “After an electoral roll has been certified or re-certified, as the case may be, and notice of the certification or re-certification has been published in the Gazette as prescribed by regulations made under this Act, the electoral roll shall be deemed to be final and binding and shall not be questioned or appealed against, or reviewed, quashed or set aside by any court.”

There are now suspicious increases of voters in the electoral roll even in places one would have thought have suffered from rural-urban migration.

It is significant that Gerakan, a small peninsula party, scored victories in the east coast of Sabah while MCA suffered losses in west coast.

Sabahans, by and large living in the more urban areas, voted against BN parties and MCA’s two candidates were contesting there unlike the two Gerakan candidates Raymond Tan in Tanjong Papat and Au Kam Wah in Elopura.

The Tanjong Papat constituency also encompasses Pulau Berhala where there is a large concentration of refugees and immigrants from the southern Philippines.

Election observers noted that Tan was trailing when the ballots from the Sabahan areas were being counted but took the lead when the ballots from other more rural streams were counted.

It was the same for Au in Elopura who scrapped past with a majority of 251 votes.

Same ploy in peninsular

MCA’s Agnes Shim and Edward Khoo who stood in Luyang and Kapayan were trounced by margins of 8,676 and 7,287 respectively.

It’s the same in many other marginal seats both at state and parliamentary level that had earlier been called for the opposition.

In fact according to reports coming out of Kuala Lumpur, in all 26 parliamentary seats in Sabah (including Labuan), BN managed to garner just over half the number of electorate.

It appears, to some extent, the same ploy was used there.

As such even if candidates were allowed to challenge the electoral rolls, it’s questionable if the results – as in the celebrated case of 1999 – would be allowed to stand.

-FMT