KOTA KINABALU: Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) Penampang Chief, Senator Datuk John Ambrose said the 574,120 increase in new voters in Sabah within just four years since the last election is just impossible.
He said it was shocking that there are more than 16,000 Indians registered as voters in Kudat constituency alone.
“According to the EC statistics there are 3,818 Indian voters registered in Banggi, 5,392 Indian voters in Tanjong Kapor and 7,446 Indian voters in Pitas. All three areas are under the Kudat parliamentary seat.
“The Election Commission (EC) must immediately filter out the dubious voters before the 15th GE on Nov. 19. The job of the EC is to ensure a clean and fair election and having voters whose origins are unknown will defeat the purpose.
“In worst case scenario, if the EC can’t clean up the electoral rolls on time, then these 574,120 should not be allowed to vote. Certainly there would be local voters among them but we should not take the risk of allowing those who have no business to participate in our elections to do so.
“And if the EC insists on allowing the 574,120 to vote, other than producing their MyKads, they should also produce their birth certificates before being allowed to cast their votes at the various centres,” he said.
Ambrose said he doubts the 574,120 are all Malaysians.“Something is not right. It is just impossible, for example in Pensiangan, that there are 24,076 new voters compared to four years ago. Why the sudden jump of 76.7pc?
“The EC should not blindly register new voters and not raise the red flag when there was a ridiculous increase in new voters,” he said.Daily Express had reported that the coming general election will see 1,638,806 Malaysians in Sabah able to cast their vote – a whopping increase of 574,120 new voters (53.9pc) over the last election four years ago when1,064,686 were eligible.
A study of the Election Commission statistics reveal that the bulk of the increase could not be due to Undi18 but happened between 2018 and 2020.
The Undi 18 which enabled 18-year-olds to vote only came into effect after parliament approved the motion last December.
It was earlier adduced in the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants (RCI) that an Indian national who was born in Chennai, India, who supposedly obtained a Mykad under a shadowy “Project IC” during the tenure of Tun Dr Mahathir as Prime Minister, falsely claimed in his applicatio to the NRD that he was born in Kudat.
He now heads a Barisan Nasional component in Sabah.This has led to calls for a Sabah IC, in addition to the Mykad. So that those who have falsely obtained or were given these documents are not Sabahans, although they may consider themselves as Malaysians.