Press Conference by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjong, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on 29 November 1994.
DAP calls on Election Commission to explain why there are over 30,000 duplicate voters’ with same identity cards as other registered voters in the certified 1993 voters; electoral register
Last week, the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamed said that 5,000 UMNO supporters in Pahang had their names transferred without their knowledge from one parliamentary constituency to another.
The Election Commission secretary Datuk Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman also told the press that names of more then 20,000 voters had been switched to other areas without their knowledge in the 1994 electoral roll.
This is only one form of the prevalent abuse of “phantom voters” where the electoral rolls are padded fraudulently with false voters to give certain political parties, in most cases Barisan Nasional parties, unfair and undemocratic advantage.
The Election Commission and the Prime Minister had not referred to another type of ‘phantom voters’, namely the registration of voters in certain constituencies to influence their election results although these people do not live or work in the constituencies concerned. This was how for instance Datuk Lee San Choon won the Seremban Parliamentary constituency in the 1982 general elections.
Today I wish to expose another type of gross irregularity in the electoral roll in Malaysia.
At present, although the 1994 electoral roll is being prepared, the certified roll would be the 1993 electoral register which will be used if general elections are held this year or before the 1994 electoral roll had been certified.
The DAP has discovered gross irregularities in the 1993 electoral roll where there are multiple registrations for the same identity card number. There are at least over 30,000 such cases for the whole country.
The DAP has so far worked out such multiple registrations, which included triple registration for one same identity card number for eleven states and the breakdown of such multiple registration for the same identity card number for the eleven states are as follows:-
Kedah 2,297
Penang 1,246
Perak 3,856
Wilayah 979
N. Sembilan 769
Melaka 303
Johor 3,704
Pahang 1,293
Sarawak 4,229
Sabah 4,991
Total 27,953
We have not got the figures for Kelantan and Trengganu.
It is most shocking such multiple registration for the same identity card number could be so rampant in the certified electoral roll when the Election Commission had claimed that it has used the most sophisticated computer as well as liasing with the National registration Department to ferret out such false entries.
In the multiple registrations, the same identity card numbers had been used to register different persons, even different races in different constituencies and sometimes in the same constituency.
The next general elections will be the ninth general elections in Malaysia history and it is most shocking that after conducting general elections for four decades, the Election Commission could allow such basic mistake in the electoral roll to be so widespread and blatant.
It would appear that the Election Commission is not only unable to prevent abuses of the electoral roll as the planting of phantom voters on a massive scale, but it is also unable, despite its latest computer technology, to clean the electoral roll to prevent dishonest padding of the electoral roll to unfairly and undemocraticly influence election results.
If the Election Commission s unable to clean up the 1993 electoral roll, what guarantee is there that it could produce a clean and honest 1994 electoral register which it is now preparing?
These are among the abuses and weaknesses of the electoral system which makes the Malaysia general elections system falls far short of the standards of a “free, fair and clean” general elections and this is why the DAP reiterates its call for an All Party Conference with the Election Commission to make the next general election genuinely ‘free, fair and clean’.