Money should be spent on long term benefits

Chong Chieng Jen, MP for Bandar Kuching, said that the BN government is more concerned in buying votes in order to stay in power rather than in saving lives lost through road accidents.

He was commenting on the lack of funds to build a double carriageway of the Borneo Highway right from Kuching to Kota Kinabalu especially in certain parts which are accident-prone, but prefer to give away ‘BR1M’  amounting to RM3 billion.

Chong who is also the Kota Sentosa Assemblyman said that Prime Minister Najib is prepared to spend more than RM3 billion in ‘Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia’. Each family whose income does not exceed RM3000 has received RM500.

“Now, Najib may announce another BR1M before the general election. It means another RM3 billion is to be spent. He is prepared to spend such money to buy votes in order to stay in power rather than to build safe roads and hospitals to save lives.

“My question to Najib is: Is it so important to Najib than the lives of Sarawakians? The upgrading of the Borneo Highway can be postponed sine die, but buying votes for him is so important,” he said.

Chong said that giving BR1M of RM500 only brings short term benefits to the recipients. 

PKR submission to PSC

SUBMISSION TO THE

PARLIAMENTARY SELECT COMMITTEE

FOR ELECTORAL REFORM

 

PARTI KEADILAN RAKYAT

SARAWAK

8 December 2011

Kuching

===================================================================


CONTENTS




1. Introduction

2. Adoption of Submission by Bersih 2.0

3. Issues of Particular Concern to Sarawak:

i) Absentee voting


ii) Voting by Army Personnel

iii) Certainty of Polling Station and Accessibility

iv) Cleaning Up the Electoral Roll

v) Mandatory Signing Of Form 14 By All Polling/Counting Agents


vi) Government Agencies – Intimidation


vii) Money Politics – Vote Buying


viii) 21- Day Campaign Period

ix) Fair and Free Access To Media


x) Constituency Re-delineation and Gerrymandering

4. Conclusion


=================================================================== 


1. INTRODUCTION

On behalf of PKR Sarawak, I wish to thank the honourable members of the Parliamentary Select Committee for this opportunity to present our views and concerns, and to make recommendations for reform to address the weaknesses of the present electoral process.

At the outset, we wish to highlight that it is the firm stand of PKR Sarawak that Sarawak is not merely one of the 13 states which form Malaysia, but an equal partner with Malaya and Sabah in the Federation of Malaysia, as specified in the 18 point agreement. However for ease of reference, we will use ‘the state’ to refer to Sarawak for this submission.

2. ADOPTION OFSUBMISSION BY BERSIH 2.0

Having read thesubmission made to the Committee by Bersih 2.0,PKR Sarawak fully supports and adopts the demands made by Bersih 2.0:

 

1) Clean the Electoral Roll

 

2) Reform of Postal Ballot

3) Use of Indelible Ink

 

4) Minimum 21 days Campaign Period

5) Free and Fair Access to Media

 

6) Strengthen Public Institutions

 

7) Stop Corruption

8) Stop Dirty Politics

PKR Sarawak also welcomes the Interim Recommendations made by the PSC to Parliament last week. However, we echo the concerns expressed by Bersih 2.0 that out of their eight demands, only one is fully adopted while two others are partially adopted but five other demands have yet to be included. We submit that in order to achieve significant improvement in the democratic processes and some semblance of fairness to the opposition parties, the minimum of the eight recommendations made by Bersih 2.0must be implemented and such implementations be completed before the 13th General Elections.

 

3. ISSUES OF PARTICULAR CONCERN TO SARAWAK

The submission prepared by Bersih 2.0 provides a comprehensive coverage of all the issues plaguing the electoral process throughout the country. However, given the size of Sarawak, the remoteness of the rural areas, the poor network and condition of trunk roads, the inadequacy of transport and communication services and the poverty of the people, there are some matters of particular concern which we wish to emphasise.

 

i) ABSENTEE VOTING

Sarawak is many years behind Peninsula Malaysia in development and hence job opportunities are scarce. Large numbers of Sarawakians have left their homes out of economic necessity or to seek better opportunities. Rural-urban migration has resulted in the movement of large numbers of rural Sarawakians to the towns and cities, both within the state and in the peninsula in search of work. In addition, institutionalized race based policies for education and employment have driven many Sarawakians to migrate to other countries.

According to the Election Commission Chairman, voter turnout in the first Sarawak election in 1963 was 80 per cent, 1974 (75.10 per cent), 1979 (72.8 per cent), 1983 (72.6 per cent), 1987 (73 per cent), 1991 (72.8 per cent), 1996 (64.2 per cent), 2001 (67 per cent) and 2006 (63.2 per cent). [Bernama, 15 April 2011]. He said that this decreasing trend could be due to rural-urban migration.

It is estimated that some 50,000-200,000 Sarawakians live and work away from their homes within Sarawak and in Peninsula Malaysia.These Sarawakians must be given the opportunity to exercise their rights to vote. We note that the PSC has recommended that absentee voting be extended to all Malaysians living overseas and East Malaysians living in Peninsula Malaysia and vice versa. However, we urge that such rights be also given to native Sarawakians working in the towns and cities within the state, but working outside their polling stations. The majority of these workers earn very low wages as unskilled workers or labourersand can ill afford to travel home to vote. Not only do they have to fork out money for the fares but they also lose out on earnings as many are paid on a daily basis.

Intra-state travel is extremely difficult and challenging in Sarawak. To give you an idea of the size of Sarawak, the land area of Sarawak is equivalent to 94% the area of the whole of Peninsula Malaysia. Sarawak extends 679 kms from one end to the other while Peninsula Malaysia spans 740 km from north to south, only about 79 kmslonger than Sarawak.

Whilst one can drive the length of Peninsula Malaysia on the North-South Expressway stretching from Johor in the south to the Thai border in the north in 14 hours, it takes around 3 days to drive from one end of Sarawak to the other. There is no luxury of a train service and the bus services are woefully inadequate. Many places are only accessible by river and on foot. Air connectivity is available between some major towns but there are insufficient flights and some big towns such as Kapit still do not have airports.

Therefore, even if a Sarawakian voter from, let’s say Ba’kalalan, who works in Johor Bahru wants to go home to vote, it would be no easy task. He could fly to Kuching from JB on one of the 2 direct flights a day on AirAsia, or if he chose to fly on our National carrier MAS, he would have to fly to KL first, then to Kuching, Sibu, Miri, or Kota Kinabalu, the main towns where the major airports are located. From these points, he could somehow acquire a 4-wheel drive vehicle and bounce along our R3 standard road for 3 to 13 hours to reach Limbang or Lawas. If he was unable to get his hands on a 4-wheel drive, he would have to hop on a bus – which would add many more hours to his journey. From Limbang or Lawas, the road condition would worsen considerably and he could make it home in another few hours, if luck were on his side.

 

Of course he could also fly from Kuching to Miri, and then take another plane to Ba’Kalalan. That is if he could afford the fare for himself and maybe his wife.

Logistically, it is impossible, no matter how strong the desire, for everyone who calls Ba’kelalan home to return home to vote. There is only 1 direct flight a week and 5 transit flights weekly from Miri to Ba’kelalan and each flight can only accommodate 19 passengers, the planes being the small Twin Otters. This scenario also applies to places like Bario, Long Seridan, Long Banga, and Long San.

Unfortunately, the reality is that most people from rural Sarawak who work away from their homes are unable to travel home to vote. The expense and effort it would take becomes too much to even consider. Even for those working in Kuching, this is the situation. The socio-economic conditions in Sarawak are such that many of the rural population are struggling to make a living in the towns and cities.

 

It is therefore imperative that absent voting be implemented even within the state. We strongly support Bersih’s demand that distance voting centres must be set up in all our foreign missions, major towns in every West Malaysian state, every division in Sarawak and every residency in Sabah.We also back the call for the campaign period to be extended to a minimum of 21 days or more to ensure adequate time for voters to apply for absentee voting and subsequent logistic preparation.

ii) VOTING BY ARMY PERSONNEL

In the recent Sarawak elections, postal voting was carried out for 12,000 army personnel and around 6,000 police personnel (Malaysiakini 13 April 2011). The majority of them were non-Sarawakian soldiers and police, who could well have been king-makers in marginal constituencies.

These army and police personnel are registered to vote in the constituencies where their camps or stations are located instead of in their home constituencies. This is a patently unfair practice for the constituents and also for the candidates. Voters cast their votes for those who they believe will serve their constituency best, ie these voters have the interests of their localities at heart. Is it safe for us to assume that member of the armed forces really cares about the local interests of the area where he has been posted? It would be safer to say that his loyalties lie closer to his real home. If this army personnel does not really have any real interest in the politics of the camp’s constituency, we can assume that he would not really care one way or another whether he ticks the ballot paper or somebody else does it for him. In the light of recent revelations of the abuse of postal votes by army personnel (eg. An ex-army personnel claimed that he was instructed by his superiors to vote for BarisanNasional – Free Malaysia Today 5 August 2011), we call for reform of the voting process for army personnel and the police force.

Military and police voters should be allowed to register for their home constituencies rather than where they serve, as in the case of overseas voters. Pollingcentreslocated outside the army camps and must be designed to cater for ballots cast for distant constituencies. We support Bersih 2.0’s recommendations in this regard.

iii) CERTAINTY OF POLLING CENTRE AND ACCESSIBILITY

In a state as vast as Sarawak, with the major portion of the area classified as rural, going to the polling station to exercise one’s democratic right to vote is not a stroll in the park. It is more like a long walk on the jungle track and a boat ride and or perhaps a van or truck rideon unsealed roads to the polling station.

It is not uncommon for voters to show up on the day of polling at the place where they have voted for years, to suddenly find that they have been moved for no reason to vote at a different polling station. They have not changed addresses and no notices have been received to inform them of the change in polling stations. For urban voters, this is an irritation and an inconvenience but for the rural voter, this means that he or she is in all likelihood not going to be able to cast her vote.

In the words of the Election Chairman, in Sarawak, ‘…there is a state constituency that is even bigger than Pahang. And almost all the other constituencies (71 in all) are bigger than Melaka state. So the logistics can be quite difficult … If a voter goes to the wrong polling centre, it can take him hours to get back to the right one’. [Bernama 15 April 2011].

This underhanded tactic of moving voters around robs citizens of their rights to vote and this practice must be stopped.

In many rural Parliamentary Constituencies in Sarawak, many voters are made to vote at polling stations far away from their longhouses. They have to pay expensive fares from their longhouses to go to the polling stations to cast their votes. This discourages many of such voters from going to vote on Polling day. We recommend that all voters be allowed to vote at the polling centres closest to their homes, whether in urban or rural areas and that no movement of votes be made unless at the written request of the voter concerned.

iv) CLEANING UP THE ELECTORAL ROLL

This issue of dead voters on the electoral roll has been brought up on many occasions by many parties. In Sarawak, we are not spared the same problem. The Electoral Roll is in urgent need of a clean-up.

Many constituencies especially those held by opposition parties are finding that the numbers of their registered voters, including and especially postal voters have increased by the hundreds and thousands over a short period of time.

We wish to see a stop to this highly irregular practice, which we may add, results in or adds to the negative perception on the impartiality of the Election Commission.

v) MANDATORY SIGNING OF FORM 14 BY ALL POLLING/COUNTING AGENTS

An important matter especially for rural constituencies is the need for ALL Polling/Counting Agents of all the candidates to sign the Form 14. The signing of this Form 14 by every Polling Agent/Counting Agent of the candidates and the Presiding Officer at each Polling Station/ Counting Centre should be made mandatory. This is because the ballot boxes and Form 14 are brought/transported back to the main Tallying Centre or to Returning Officer by boats or helicopter and over great distances unaccompanied by the Polling/Counting Agents of the Candidates. Along the way, mysterious things have been known to happen to these ballot boxes, including disappearances and transformations.

On the matter of Form 14, we wish to highlight that during the last Sarawak elections, in several polling stations, some polling/counting agents from the opposition parties were denied their copies of the Form 14, which meant that we had no evidence of the number of votes we had won. We call for an end to such dishonesty and closer observance of the election laws and regulations.

vi) GOVERNMENT AGENCIES – INTIMIDATION

In the Sarawak elections in April 2011, rural supporters of the opposition were subject to intimidation and harassment by members of government agencies who were sent in from within the state and also from Peninsula Malaysia to camp out at kampungs and longhouses. Armed forces personnel threatened rural voters with destruction of their schools if they dared to vote for the opposition.

This practice of fear and intimidation is more prevalent in Sarawak where many of the rural voters are isolated and do not have the information and support available to those in the urban areas.

One particular feature of the rural community in Sarawak is the role of the TuaiRumah or head of the longhouse. The TheTuaiRumah plays a vital role in maintaining the harmonious relationship among community members and preserving the well-being of the whole longhouse. He looks after the welfare of community, co-ordinates communal activities like gotong-royong, officiates at ceremonies, settles disputes among his subjects etc. The TuaiRumah are paid an allowance by the Government but are elected by the members of their community. Over the years, the worrying trend has been for the government to use the TuaiRumah to influence their communities to support the Barisan National parties. Recently, several TuaiRumahwere dismissed and replaced by pro-BarisanNasional ones following the April 16 state election.In Machan, Kanowit, six tuairumah were sacked after the state elections, without any reasons being given. It is widely believed though, that the sacking was in retribution for the support given by the voters from the six longhouses for the PKR candidate. More recently, in Ngemah in Kanowit, after votes at an election for a TuaiRumah were counted, the government appointed the losing candidate as TuaiRumah instead of the candidate who had received the most number of votes. This was believed to be because the losing candidate is a Barisan National supporter. The unilateral and high-handed actions of the government in replacing rightfully electedTuaiRumah with their supporters constitute intimidation, manipulation and punishment of the rural community and should be condemned by all right thinking people. This particular segment of the population is especially disadvantaged, having been given little access to basic facilities such as water, electricity, education, housing and healthcare. To deny them the fundamental right to choose the people who will speak for them and act in their interests is especially cruel.

We wish to stress that longhouse communities should not be penalized for the political choices of their members. The government must recognize TuaiRumah who have been elected by the people and pay them the allowance to which they are entitled.

 

We re-iterate the demand of Bersih 2.0 to stop dirty politics and we adopt the recommendations made in their submissions.

 

vii) MONEY POLITICS – VOTE BUYING

Besides the documented incidences of vote buying including the abuse of public expenditure and the threat of denial of development benefits mentioned in the submission by Bersih 2.0, the Malaysian Election Observer’s Network (MEO-Net) also claimed to have uncovered evidence of vote buying and threats following the recent Sarawak election [Free Malaysia Today 26 May 2011]. There have also been countless undocumented instances of vote buying told by those who were offered money for their votes.

This scourge to fair and free elections must be stopped. We urge the government and authorities to enforce the Election Laws and prosecute those found guilty of this practice.

 

viii) 21-DAY CAMPAIGN PERIOD

Given the vast terrain of Sarawak, and the extreme difficulty of reaching the rural communities, we demand that the campaign period be extended to 21 days so that candidates are better able to present their manifestos and pledges to their voters. Many of the state constituencies and most of the parliamentary constituencies cover huge areas, large parts of which are only accessible by boats and unsealed roads. During election campaigns, the BN incumbents have an unfair advantage over the opposition in that they utilize government transportation of every kind – cars, boats, trucks and even helicopters to enable them to cover more ground. This is tantamount to abuse of the state’s facilities and must be stopped.

In order to facilitate coverage by candidates of significant numbers of villages and longhouses within their constituencies, 21 days would be a more reasonable campaign period. This will go a long way towards ensuring that voters make informed choices when casting their votes.

ix) FAIR AND FREE ACCESS TO MEDIA

The mass media is central to fair and free elections,as it enables voters to access essential information for individual choices and decisions. The media also has the duty to cover the elections in a fair, accurate, objective and balanced manner and to ensure that all parties are given access and electoral issues accorded sufficient prominence.

The mainstream media in Malaysia is notoriously known for being biased towards the Barisan Nasional parties, due in part to component parties having ownership of or majority shares in the newspapers and radio and television stations. Opposition parties have mainly relied on the alternative media to reach the masses and have been successful to a large extent.

However, in rural Sarawak where half a million people are still not connected to the electricity grid, the internet is out of reach for the majority of the people. The only sources of information for them are newspapers and battery operated radios.

During the last state elections, members of the public were subject to daily doses of pro Barisan Nasional propaganda in the mainstream media while the opposition parties received minimum exposure.

We urge that the recommendations of Bersih 2.0 in relation to fair and free access to the media be adopted.

 

xi) CONSTITUENCY RE-DELINEATION ANDGERRYMANDERING

We note that a lengthy submission has been made by a concerned citizenMrNg ChakNgoon in Sabah on the issues arising from constituency re-delineation and commend him for his efforts. In Sarawak, there is an over-representation of rural constituencies, mainly in areas which are controlled by the ruling BarisanNasional parties. As a consequence of gerrymandering, during the recent state elections the BN parties obtained 55 seats or 75% of the seats with 55% of the popular vote, while the opposition and independent obtained only 16 seats (25%o f the seats) with 45% of the popular votes. This is a gross injustice to the opposition parties.

We call for the reform of the current manner of the drawing of boundaries to ensure that each vote is accorded its due value. In addition, we urge the Election Commission to break free from the shackles of bondage to the government and be the independent body it was mandated to be.

a) REPRESENTATION IN FEDERAL PARLIAMENT

The Cobbold Commission, which was set up to determine whether the people of North Borneo (now Sabah) and Sarawak supported the proposal to create the Malaysia consisting of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak stated in their report under paragraphs 165 and 190(g) that there was strong support for the merger and that the representation of the Borneo States in the Federal Parliament should make up 34% of parliamentary seats and take account not only of their populations but also their size and potentialities. In addition, the Commission hoped that the Election Commission would also take account of the distance from the centre, and the difficulty of internal communications. Article 161E of the Federal Constitution provides for the protection of this quota for the two states in that no amendment is allowed without their consent. Sarawak is a huge state and many of her parliamentary constituencies are as big as any of the states in Peninsula Malaysia with accessibility only through jungle tracks and logging roads. The increase of representatives from such an area in the Federal Parliament would definitely augur well for the constituents and for national integration.

The United PasokomogunKadazaDusunMurutOrganisation [UPKO] at the hearing before this Committee recently called for the Election Commission in its present re-delineation exercise to restore the quota of 34% to Sabah and Sarawak, in adherence to the policy that the number of parliamentary seats in Peninsula Malaysia must not be more than two thirds of the total parliamentary seats. We fully support this call and urge the Election Commission to act accordingly.

 

4. CONCLUSION

Malaysia is now 48 years old and we are proud of the progress we have made in economic development. However, in terms of fair and free elections, we lag behind many countries in the region and it is particularly sobering to realize that we are fighting for the same level playing field that the pro-democracy forces in Zimbabwe are also fighting to achieve. There, an election roadmap is being implemented in attempts to ensure fair and free elections, the ingredients of which are: ‘… there must be complete freedom, there must be equal access to the electorate, people must be able to access all corners of the country; there must be freedom from reprisals after the election; there must be effective, equal access to the media and there must be an elaborate election justice system and a good constitutional framework’, quoting the spokesman for the pro-democracy party. [dailynews.co.zw; 7 December 2011]These are the very cornerstones of democracy to which we aspire!

Arguably, we are slightly ahead of Zimbabwe in that our society has been free from physical violence and civil unrest, and in that we do have a constitutional framework which guarantees our citizens the right to vote, and Election Laws which regulate the conduct of elections. However, much needs to be done to ensure that our citizens are in practice accorded the fair and free elections to which they are guaranteed and which they have been fighting (and marching) to achieve.

PKR Sarawak asks that the Parliamentary Select Committeemake strong recommendations to the Parliament that this proposal for reform and the demands of Bersih 2.0 be implemented, and that the implementation be carried out before the 13th General Elections, failing which our efforts may come to naught.

Ends.

Campaign to reject vote buying candidates!

Long house residents happily distributing the vote buying money paid from the state coffer in support of Sarawak BN candidates!

MEO-Net (Malaysian Election Observers Network) feel compelled to present more evidences of vote buying in the 10^th Sarawak State elections because of the persistent denial by politicians involved that the pay-off to voters were for the purpose of buying their votes.

Since a politician in the centre of vote-buying accusation Mr Joseph Mauh anak Ikeh has come out to admit to the pay-off to voters in his constituency, we consider that we need not conceal a photograph of those who are caught in distributing cash to the voters in a long house, identified in the politician’s constituency in N52 Tamin.

In addition to this we are putting forward more damning evidences in the forms of payment vouchers from the Chief Minister’s office –dishing out RM15,000.00 in one case to a long house, and in another case, a payment voucher and a cheque of RM1,000.00, for another long house recipient.

A video on the vote buying, which is extended from a previous one on the issue, but added with new damning evidences, is here.

A RM1,000.00 cheque from the Chief Minister's office to buy vote for BN Sarawak.

We were reliably informed by our local observers that the payments were made in the following sequence: After the dissolution of the Sarawak State Assembly on Mar 21^st, prepared cheques, of various amount corresponding to the voters number in the individual long houses are distributed at the BN office in Selangau, to about 200 long house chiefs in the N52 Tamin constituency, who were summoned there.

One payment voucher dated March 25^th, where we obtained a photocopy shows an amount of RM15,000.00 made out to a long house chief, while another voucher dated March 25^th, and a cheque dated March 27^th, of RM1,000.00 was made out to another long house recipient.

The purpose of these payments is for the long house chiefs (`Tuai Rumah’) to distribute at RM500.00 per dwelling (`pintu’) in each of their respective long house. The payment was made in cheques only and can only be cashed, as the chiefs were told, after the victory of the BN candidate.

A voucher from the Chief Minister's office to give cheque to the long houses.

Then on the eve of polling, on April 14^th, there was another round of payment to the individual voters which is in cash of RM50.00 or RM100.00 per voter.

In the particular long house Rumah Unban the payment as shown in the video was at RM50.00 per voter.

There are a number of questionable aspects to the payments-chief of which is that they are indisputably meant to pressure the voters to vote for a particular candidate, with the cashing of the 1^st payment in cheque conditioned upon the victory of the candidate concerned.

We also discovered that there are cheating involved in many cases where some of the payments in multiple cheques bounced due to probably deliberate misspelling of the name of recipients.

We had earlier disclosed a case in Rh Kuching in the same constituency where a cheque of RM5,000.00 bounced. The claim by Mr Joseph Mauh that the payments were for transport subsidy simply does not conform to the facts deduced from the above material evidence and the more credible account given by our local observers.

Another troubling aspect of these massive payment is that the amount involved can be so huge that they went over the legal spending limits allowed for the campaign expenses of a State Assembly candidate i.e. RM100,000.00 per person. Mr Joseph Mauh himself mentioned it in his reported statement.

If the average payment to a long house is RM10,000.00 (taking a lower figure) the estimated 200 long houses in Tamin would require an amount of RM2 million for the 1^st installment of payments! Then the RM50.00 given to each voter on polling eve will amount to RM600,000.00, given that there are 12244 registered voters in Tamin.

Put together this amount to RM2,600,000.00, which grossly over shoot the legal spending limit for Mr Joseph Mauh! Since Mr Joseph Mauh claim that all the payments are for transport subsidies we call upon Mr Joseph Mauh to disclose his campaign expenses account which he is legally required to submit to the Election Commission within weeks of the polling.

This will assure the public that he did not knowingly over-spend in his campaign and therefore he did not win the election by unfair and legally prohibited advantage!

We call upon the EC to disclose Mr Joseph Mauh’s campaign expenses account so that the so-called transport subsidies can be confirmed or rejected once and for all.

Another voucher for another long house dated after dissolution of the State Assembly on Mar 21st 2011.

Other than calling the payment as transport subsidies, Mr Joseph Mauh also branded the payment as consolation payment to the voters (`sagu hati’). He should be told that such consolation payments blatantly violate the Election Offenses Act 1954 as it amount to bribery, whether the voters finally voted for him or not.

His argument that 3,000 over voters voted for his opponent did not show that he did not tried to induce the voters to vote for him.

The 3^rd aspect that is troubling is that: the money actually came from the Chief Minister’s office under some development budget, as can be seen from the payment vouchers. As it is well known the election was called following the dissolution of the State Assembly.

Thus any allocation from the state coffer to advantage a candidate’s campaign amount to criminal theft from the state coffer!

Such pay-off to voters is believed by many – including Mr Joseph himself, to be happening in all 71 constituencies in the 10^th Sarawak state elections.

Assuming this is true-since we have no reason to suspect his insider’s opinion, the total amount of public fund which was used to campaign for the BN for the whole of Sarawak, with 979,796 voters, come to an astounding amount of RM 208 million, assuming that the RM 2.6 million fund for Tamin’s 12,224 voters represent the average going rate that apply across the state!

This amount to gross criminality against the state and inordinate unfairness to the Opposition as they have no similar access to public fund! Most seriously the results of elections which are significantly distorted by vote buying, are unrepresentative of the real choice of the people and are therefore invalid!

Campaign to reject vote-buying candidates for General Elections

In view of the evidences uncovered so far we call upon the authorities i.e. the Election Commission and the MACC to investigate vote buying incidents and also the extent of the abuse of public fund for the campaign of all the candidates for the 10^th Sarawak State elections.

If the authorities fail to act-as most people don’t expect them to, then the last resort in a democracy is for the voters to use the voting power in their hand to reject all vote buying candidates in the coming General Elections.

We give tw0 weeks for the authorities to commence action-failing which we would initiate a nation-wide campaign to mobilize voters to reject all candidates who try to buy votes in the coming General Elections, more so on those who would not stop at stealing public fund to do so!

MEO-Net is formed in 2009 to coordinate civil society groups who are involved in voter registration, voter education and election observation. There are 6 network members: MALVU, SEW, MEW, SAFREL, KOMAS & NIEI.

Endorsers of the statement: Brimas, Empower, Penangwatch, SOS, MEO-Net

Enq. 013-5900339 (Ong)

Who is buying who?

Recently two articles have appeared in this blog regarding money politics in the Tamin state constituency exposing how money politics was used to defeat the PKR candidate.

And the party doing it was allegedly Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) together with BN campaigners and agents.

Bounced cheques each with a value of RM15,000 were issued to some 80 percent of 220 Tuai Rumahs. When the Tuai Rumah presented the cheques to a bank, the bank found some ‘errors’ on the cheques - either the names were wrongly spelt, their ICs were incomplete or names not according to ICs, etc, etc.

Funnily, the bank instead of advising the Tuai Rumahs to go to the persons who issued the cheques detained and retained the cheques. Has the bank got the right to retain the cheques?

Another story was also recently published on the distribution of money to buy votes.

Now the same PRS is filing an election petition to declare the Independent candidate George Lagong’s electoral victory in Pelagus as ‘null and void’ as it accused George of using money to buy votes.

Isn’t this funny that PRS-BN is pointing fingers at an independent for using money to buy votes? In other 70 state constituencies, the fingers are pointing at the BN parties.

The petition was filed on Friday 20 May at the Sibu High Court, and if PRS is successfully in declaring the seat ‘null and void’, then there will be another election in the constituency.

Should this happen, another chance of vote-buying is in the offing. The real ‘winners’ will be the voters!

PKR wants immediate investigation

(This story first appeared in Free Malaysia Today)

KUCHING: Sarawak PKR Chief Baru Bian calls on the Election Commission and Malaysian Anti-corruption Commission to immediately investigate an allegation that Barisan Nasional had resorted to vote-buying to the win the Bawan Assan seat.

Bian was commenting on a news item on 100 Ibans who stormed the SUPP Office in Sibu on Monday demanding that they be paid the balance of RM400 each.

The natives from two longhouses of Rumah Chandi and Rumah Pasang claimed that they were given RM100 as an upfront payment before voting day and promised another RM400 for each voter after the election.

It is understood they have been paid the RM400.

But Ibans from another longhouse are also claiming the same amount.

Asked to comment on this, Bian said: “This is solid evidence that the BN won by ‘rasuah’ whereas we in Pakatan Rakyat lost but retained our ‘meruah’.

“This appears to be the practice everywhere including N70 Ba’Kelalan,” said Bian who was elected as assemblyman for Ba’Kelalan.

“I demand EC and MACC to investigate immediately. This is proof of our fear in the first place that this election would be the dirtiest

“We want to see how neutral and effective EC and MACC are,” he said.

Meanwhile, the chairman of Sibu SUPP Bumiputra committee Andrew Shilling denied the allegations and accused DAP and Sibu Election Watch (SEW) of making ‘absurd’ claim.

“It is very absurd, not true and baseless to say we were distributing RM400 election money to 100 Ibans as reported,” he said, claiming that the accusations had damaged the reputation of the Ibans and they are considering taking legal action.

Shilling, who is a political secretary to the Chief Minister, admitted however that he met 18 longhouse chiefs and representatives of village development and security committee (JKKK) at the SUPP headquarters on Monday to discuss payment of wages for election workers.

He said that the group of people who assembled on the ground floor of the headquarters had nothing to do with the party.

“They could be supporters of the opposition parties,” he said.

SUPP-BN candidate Wong Soon Koh was re-elected to the Bawan Assan constituency defeating DAP candidate Alice Lau Kiong Yieng with a majority of 1,808 votes.

Wong secured 7,316 votes as against 5,508 votes by Alice Lau.

The constituency has 16,743 voters, out of which 5,834 are Iban voters.

It is said that Wong’s victory was due to the strong support given by the Ibans.