MP:666 dubious voters in Tawau Constituency

Alen Kee

TAWAU: The Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) Tawau branch had detected 666 dubious voters aged over 90 but are still registered under the Election Commission (EC) 2010 electoral roll for Tawau parliamentary constituency.

SAPP vice president Datuk Chua Soon Bui said three of the very questionable voters detected are a l27-year-old man, and two women aged 125 and 120 who are still listed and are using the new MyKad numbers.

"The 127-year-old man is using a new MyKad and we are questioning why the EC is not doing anything and we feel this dubious identity card is used as phantom voter," she said yesterday.

Chua who is also the Tawau member of parliament, urged the EC to clean up the electoral roll as discrepancies had been found.

"We (SAPP) used une EC's end of 2010 electoral roll for Tawau parliament P190. From 100 to 127 years old, there are 264 voters, 74 are bumiputra (42 men and 32 women) and 190 are Chinese (111 men and 79 women)," she said.

She said 162 voters are listed in Sri Tanjong, 70 in Apas and 32 in Balung, all under the Tawau parliamentary area.

For voters aged from 90 to 99, she said the SAPP office here detected 402 questionable voters out of which 148 are bumiputras and 254 Chinese.

"Of the 148 bumiputras, 84 are men and 64 are women, while our oithe 254 Chinese, 127 are men and women respectively," she said, adding 229 voters are in Sri Tanjung, 109 in Apas and 64 in Balung.

She said the total number found so far are 666 voters out of which 222 are bumiputras and 444 are Chinese, and 391 voters are in Sri Tanjong, 179 in Apas and 96 in Balung.

"We feel that most of the voters are not in existence or their identity cards had been used by others to vote as phantom voters," she said.

Chua said in March this year, she had brought up the issue in parliament and the EC said it would check but till today there had been no outcome.

"Our office here also received complaints from existing Tawau voters whose names went missing in the electoral roll. Some were transferred to Semenanjung and some to other districts." she said.

"Why are there missing voters? Why transfer out and not according to the address in the MyKad? We will write to EC for deliberation and action. Voters who voted before are not given their democratic right," she said.

"In 2009, YB (Datuk) Eric and myself met with EC and we brought a lot of issues such as the Project IC which EC has not given any transparent explanation to the public," she said.

"How can we be ensured the coming general election will have no more phantom voters. We hope EC would be answerable before the general election," she said.

Chua also called for postal votes to be counted early and not as before which was in the wee hours or in late night.

On boundary reforms, she said taking Tawau into consideration, there should be a clear delineation rather than jumbled up like the Kinabutan area here.

She also called for the use of indelible ink to avoid double voting as one of the ways to reduce discrepancies.

"Biometric is a good system but they (EC) don't have a masterlist to check. We need to setup a masterlist first in the country before we can use the biometric system," she said.

"We are very disappointed with EC. How can EC ensure there will be no more discrepancies and for the people to have confidence in our democratic system?" she said.

The Borneo Post

Thursday, September 22, 2011

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