Malaysia's 2nd Game Changer

We heard damaging disclosures in the Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the issuance of IC to non-citizens to vote in the Sabah State Election in the 1990s. From Malaysian Insiders, we learn:

Former Sabah NRD director Ramli Kamarudin said Megat Junid, then the deputy home affairs minister, had told him that the NRD receipts were to match the names and IC numbers of registered voters.

“We gave them (immigrants) RM20,” Ramli told the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants here today.

“We teach them how to vote. We gather them in a house. We send them by bus to the polling stations. Then we send them back and we collect the receipts. The receipts are just for voting. We did not give them identity cards,” he added.

Ramli said that about 200 NRD receipts were issued in five or six state constituencies each in Sabah that were considered “black spots that were difficult for the government to win.”

This is consistent with what I heard on the ground. In December 2011, I wrote in the now-defunct Merdeka Review:

On the eve of the 1999 state election, my cousin told my father that he shouldn’t bother to vote because her husband’s estate workers- mostly from Indonesia- were being ferried by buses to polling centers. The husband told my cousin that someone would give ICs to these Indonesian workers and then they would walk into the polling center to vote. 

For the English version, go to my post (here).

Did the election fraud have any impact on the election? Read on:

He (former Sabah NRD director Ramli Kamarudin) added that the directive was given at a meeting with Megat Junid, Umno’s Datuk Seri Osu Sukam (who later became the Sabah chief minister in 1999) and an NRD registration officer called Asli Sidup, at Hyatt Hotel here two weeks before the 1994 state election.

“The receipts were strictly for voting. After that, we would collect the receipts and destroy them,” said Ramli.

Asli testified later that 200 NRD receipts were used in the Kawang state constituency in the 1994 state election, which Osu won by a mere 64 votes.

This revelation could be two possible scenarios:

1. Barisan Nasional ('BN') could suffer a serious political setback in Sabah. If the votes in Sabah - & to some extent Sarawak - were to swing to Pakatan, BN may lose the General Election.

2. The Election Commission ('EC') would be under close scrutiny from now on- which is a good thing. The question of the today: Can BN win the next General Election fairly?

Malaysia is about to see another game changer?!