Pakatan cries foul over EC's transfer of voters

By Stephanie Sta Maria - Free Malaysia Today

HULU SELANGOR: At least 230 voters in Kampung Tanjong have discovered that they have been mysteriously relocated from voting in Hulu Selangor to nearby Rawang constituency.
This transfer of votes has left PKR fuming as it sees this as an attempt by the Election Commission to undermine its chances of winning the by-election on April 25.

“There are stringent procedures regarding the transfer of voters,” Selangor PKR election director Abdullah Sani told FMT.

“Applications must be submitted to Parliament and the EC cannot act on its own accord.

“There is absolutely no basis for the transfer as some voters live less than 100 meters away from their 'unit peti undi'.

“These voters were on the list in 2008. Something is not right here. I was with the voters yesterday and I can tell you that they are very upset,” he added.

He will be submitting a formal complaint to Parliament tomorrow to demand an explanation for the missing Hulu Selangor voters from the district's voter list.

He warned that if the relevant government minister does not respond to his complain by the end of tomorrow, he will then lodge a police report and highlight the issue to 'the rest of the world.'

Voters assigned different stations

According to PKR's election director Fuziah Salleh, the EC's rationale for the transfer was because Kampung Tanjong falls under the Rawang municipality.

The EC's rationale was that moving the voters to the Rawang locality would enable them to be better served, added Fuziah. Rawang falls under the Selayang constituency whose MP is PKR's William Leong.

“They may have an explanation but what we are concerned about is that the transfer has not been gazetted,” the Kuantan MP pointed out.

On a separate matter, she said that a whopping 13,488 registered voters in Hulu Selangor have been assigned different polling stations than the ones they had voted in March 2008. This number makes up 20 percent of the total registered voters in Hulu Selangor.

“These voters have not been told of this transfer yet and may be going to the wrong polling stations on April 25,” she said.

“This could be the EC's way of causing havoc on election day in the hope of toppling Pakatan. It will be a repeat of what happened in Selangor in the 2004 general election,” she said. 

The April 25 by-election will see a four-cornered fight involving PKR's Zaid Ibrahim, BN's P Kamalanathan and independents Johan Mohd Diah and VS Chandran.