SUBANG JAYA, Sept 22 — Some voters in the federal seat of Batu were allowed to cast their ballots in Election 2013 despite not showing their identification cards, the Bersih tribunal was told today.
Azli Hussein, the Batu PKR election director, said he saw voters being allowed to vote after they gave their identification numbers to the officers on duty on polling day.
He said he scolded the presiding election officer for allowing such a thing to happen.
“[The officer] explained to me, it’s true, don’t have to show identity card because the queue was too long,” he told a five-man panel.
But Azli said an Election Commission (EC) officer later came and told the presiding officer to insist on the showing of identification cards by voters, and the latter then complied with the procedure.
He said around 300 to 400 voters were assigned to the particular polling centre, adding that an estimated 80 individuals had voted by the time he arrived there.
Azli also said that the election results for the Batu seat was delayed until 3am the next day, purportedly due to presiding officers placing tallying forms into ballot boxes instead of handing it to the election agents of candidates.
All the election agents had to witness the re-opening of around 18 ballot boxes to retrieve the forms, causing the vote-counting delay, Azli said.
He attributed these two incidents to the presiding officers not having proper training.
Earlier, the tribunal heard the testimony of a voter named Mohd Fadhli Khaharruddin, who claimed that he had been issued the ballot paper twice, effectively allowing him to vote twice.
Mohd Fadhli said he voted once, saying that he merely wanted to test the electoral system after the indelible ink on his finger washed off in the morning.
He said he then turned to the same polling centre and stream, but did not cast the second ballot paper into the box.
“I did this to test whether the indelible ink is working or not,” the Kuantan voter said, saying that he had lodged a police report on the same day over the matter.
According to Mohd Fadhli, the police conducted investigations and later told him that there were two identical electoral rolls being used to crosscheck the voters that day.
When faced with complaints by some voters that the indelible ink washed off easily, the EC had in the past said that the existing safeguards in the system would prevent electoral fraud through double-voting.
The People’s Tribunal on the 13th general election, which is organised by polls watchdog Bersih, has been hearing evidence since September 18 on alleged vote-rigging in the contentious polls, with the five-day hearing ending today.
The citizen’s initiative does not have the legal authority to enforce its recommendations, but has the “moral authority” to be accepted by Putrajaya, according to Bersih.
The five-member People’s Tribunal is led by Yash Pal Ghai, a former United Nations Special Representative and constitutional law expert.
The other members are former Indonesian Electoral Commission deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti, prominent lawyer Datuk Azzat Kamaludin, University of Malaya associate senior fellow Mavis Puthucheary and Rev Dr Hermen Shastri, the general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia.
In his closing speech today, Yash said the panel will meet again next Friday afternoon, where lead counsel Prof Gurdial Singh Nijar will present a summary of the evidence heard during the five-day hearing.
Yash also said the panel has three months to produce its report, which is expected to contain recommendations on improving the electoral process in Malaysia.
