59,000 foreigners ‘registered as voters’

KUALA LUMPUR: Some 59,000 foreigners have been registered as voters in Malaysia due to “gaps” in their details, according to the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (MERAP). MERAP project director Ong Kian Meng said there were “gaps” in their registration details and this has raised suspicion over their status as voters. He said this today while speaking of his finding at a Bersih-held press conference. “If you are a Malaysian born abroad, you will have a code ’71′ in your IC. If you don’t have a ’71′, that means you are a foreign-descent born in Malaysia,” he said. He added that the presence of 59,000 voters raises suspicion as their IC numbers did not contain the “71″ code but they were too old to be born in Malaysia. The 59,000 suspicious voters were among 65,455 foreigners in the electoral roll. “These voters were born before the 1980s but they don’t have the old IC numbers,” he said. Adding to the suspicion, Ong said that in the Kudat constituency in Sabah, these foreigners did not have any addresses attached to them. These data was collected from the electoral roll as at December last year. “What is more troubling is the fact that 49,000 of these ‘foreign’ voters can be found in Sabah, where problems with foreigners being given fake ICs have long been documented,” he said. Is there an alternative purpose?

Ong (picture, left) said that this information was obtained from the “race of the voter” category in the Election Commission’s (EC) list. He said he obtained this detailed list from his sources as the usual voter roll for the public did not contain this category. He pointed out that there were 65,455 foreigners in the roll including descendants from the Philippines, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Spain, Malta and Slovakia. Admitting that these cases may be genuine Malaysian voters who are foreigners, Ong said: “I am not saying that there is something wrong with all these voters, but why would the EC be tracking the race of these voters comprehensively? Are they being tracked for an alternative purpose?” Ong also highlighted cases where names were deleted or added to the voter list without the knowledge of voters. Analysing both the 2008 and 2010 electoral rolls and cross-referencing with the December 2011 roll, he said that his team had found about 110,000 names which were either deleted or added to the roll without display. He said that 106,743 names were deleted and 6,762 new ones were added. “There is a category which indicates why your name is removed or added. For example, if you have passed away, or are now a qualified postal voter. “But for these names, there were no reasons stated [for deletion or addition],” he said.

EC downplaying cases Ong also cited the case of 3.1 million non-residential voters, saying the voting constituency of the voters did not correspond with the voters’ IC address. This is an offence under Article 119 1 (b) of the Federal Constitution, which states that a voter must be a resident in the constituency which he or she is voting in. The law came to effect in 2002. However, Ong said the EC has a loose interpretation of this law. He said that this must be cleared; otherwise, the non-residential voters may be registered as phantom voters. He said that a comprehensive study was conducted by the National Registration Department (NRD) over this matter 10 years ago and the results were given to the EC. A sampling of about 200 of that data shows that these cases still persist, according to Ong. “The point is that the EC has all these comprehensive data; so why is it not tackling these problems? “It raises suspicion that this [problem of irregularities] is larger than what the EC makes it out to be,” he said.

Spirit of ISA Lives On

There are no terrorists, saboteurs and spies under the beds or in the trees. There are only people walking down the streets – for democracy. So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. – EM Forster The Internal Security Act is dead. But the spirit of ISA lives on. The dreaded law is reborn and has taken another form more horrible, more frightening, more abhorrent. In its unremitting drive to crack down on “enemies” of the state, the government has come up with a heavier weapon that gives the police extraordinary power to deal with so-called “security offences”. Now they can detain a suspect for 28 days without getting the approval of the court. To inflict more pain, the suspect is barred from seeing a lawyer for 48 hours after his arrest. To tighten the screw further, the authorities can delay informing the suspect’s next-of-kin. To instil fear into ordinary citizens, Big Brother can open their mails and messages and listen to private conversation – all in the name of the much abused term “national security”. If the Security Offences (Special Measures) Bill is an assault on basic human rights, the amendments to three criminal laws – Penal Code, Evidence Act and Criminal Procedure Code – cast a long intimidating shadow over human freedom. Civil society has been dealt a double blow by a government that has not abandoned its hostile strategy to devise more repressive laws. Under the guise of working for a so-called progressive future, the devious minds of the political conspirators running the country have cooked up a brew more venomous than the draconian law of old. If the ISA has served its spiteful purpose of causing untold suffering and misery to the victims, the thrust of the new law is merely to prolong the physical agony and mental anguish of the enemies of the state. The newfangled law will be in place in time for the biggest battle pitting an insatiable power-hungry incumbent against an invigorated opponent. It is not difficult to guess the gameplan: the all-powerful, all-encompassing, all-pervasive, open-to-abuse law is specifically targeted at clipping the wings of the challengers as well as NGOs itching to stage walks, sit-in, marches. The steel dragnet will sweep them all into the same dreary cells that had imprisoned and broken so many souls in years past. The new architecture erected to herald the dawn of a liberal era has all the hallmarks of a police state. The long spiky arm of the law can now strike out at anyone deemed a threat – minor or major – to national security. Planning more Bersih rallies? Haul in the organisers for threatening public order. Going on roadshows to expose corruption at the highest level of government? Detain the ring leaders for inciting voters to hate the government and causing unrest. Calling for press conferences to produce documents on multi-billion-ringgit projects gone awry? Shackle the spokesmen for breaching secrecy rules. Holding ceramah to attack government policies and initiatives? Charge the trouble-makers with threatening parliamentary democracy. Publishing foreign reports implicating the prime minister in some shocking scandals? Read the charge under the Penal Code and handcuff the editor. Sending e-mails or dialling someone to pass damning information about the love affair of a minister? Intercept the communication and pull in the perpetrators for revealing sensitive information. Every indiscriminate action of the police will be music to the ears of the political bosses controlling the life of the country. Indeed, the police will be acting on the orders of politicians who have everything to gain from a clampdown on the opposition. With all their enemies behind bars, the way is cleared for victory at the ballot box. But the snag is, the repressive laws will fuel public anger and lead to more unrest and demonstrations. Street protests are part and parcel of parliamentary democracy and is the most effective way to show the government the door. Yet the government wants to be the sole custodian of democracy and interpret whichever way it deems fit. The democracy it has in mind is a government of the party and for the party. The democracy the people have in mind is a government of the people and for the people. Never the twain shall meet because one uses laws to crush dissent while the other uses marches and sit-in to oppose state threats to human liberty. It is the common citizens who will have to bear the full brunt of state power in this one-sided contest. The government wants to weed out terrorists, saboteurs and spies who all represent a grave threat to national security. But there are no terrorists, saboteurs and spies under the beds or in the trees. There are only people walking down the streets – for democracy.