by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 2nd February, 1995:
Call on Election Commission and the Prime Minister to explain what action would be taken against UMNO leaders responsible for the illegal transfer of thousands of voters in Pahang
The 11-day delay in the gazetting of the certified 1994 electoral roll by the Election Commission has again highlighted the unsatisfactory nature in the preparation of the electoral roll and thrown into question the reliability of the electoral roll to be used in the next general elections.
From his comments, the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohamed seems to be alleging that 4,500 UMNO voters or supporters in Kelantan had been transferred or deleted without their knowledge.
However, this has not been confirmed by the Election Commission Chairman, Datuk Harun Din when he announced on Monday that the Election Commission has postponed the gazetting the 1994 revised electoral rolls set for January 20 to February 9. All Datuk Harun Din said was that there were “irregularities” involving an extra 4,500 voters in Kelantan which were the result of a “slight misunderstanding”.
The new 1994 electoral roll was originally scheduled to be certified and gazetted in the middle of January, but this was postponed when two weeks ago, the Election Commission secretary, Datuk Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman had said that the new 1994 electoral roll had been completed and would be gazetted on January 30 to allow the use of the 1993 electoral roll in the Sabah state assembly by-election in Sulabayan on Jan. 28.
Rashid said that the new 1994 electoral roll, to be certified on January 30, “had been cleared of all known irregularities” and “the best it (the Election Commission) could produce”.
The Election Commission owe the Malaysian people a full and satesfactory explanation as to how after a week of declaring that the 1994 completed electoral roll “had been cleared of all known irregularities” and was the “best it could produce”, there could be further irregularities involving 4,500 names in Kelantan causing a second delay in the gazetting of the 1994 electoral roll?
In the past few months, the Prime Minister and other UMNO leaders had been making allegations of mass illegal transfer of voters.
For instance, at the end of November last year, Mahathir said that the names of 5,000 UMNO supporters in Pahang had been transferred, without their knowledge, from one parliamentary constituency to another.
I understand that the majority of these 5,000 UMNO supporters who had been transferred from one parliamentary constituency to another their knowledge was committed not by Opposition parties, but by UMNO leaders themselves as part of the intraparty UMNO feuding and the constituency most affected by such illegal transfers in Pahang is Temerloh.
I call on the Election Commission and the Prime Minister to explain what action would be taken against UMNO leaders responsible for the illegal transfer of thousands of voters in Pahang from one parliamentary constituency to another without their knowledge.
The Election Commission should convene a meeting with representatives from all political parties to give a full report about the incidence of illegal mass transfer of voters or their deregistration as well as allowing representatives from all political parties to examine the all the documents relating to such illegal mass transfer of voters.