Claim of polls fraud an old trick, says Salleh
PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Harapan’s claim that cheating will take place in the 14th General Election is a “pre-emptive strike” and a familiar trick, says Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Seri Dr Salleh Said Keruak.
In the latest entry on his blog at www.sskeruak.blogspot.my yesterday, Salleh said that in 2013, the coalition then known as Pakatan Rakyat knew it would not win GE13, and so “predicted” it would lose because of fraud.
“And after the election, they raised all sorts of allegations of fraud to explain why they lost. Now they are doing it again,” Salleh added.
He was referring to former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who wrote in his blog chedet.cc yesterday that “Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak is going to cheat in GE14 on May 9, 2018”.
He said the statement was made so that when Pakatan loses, it can “save face by blaming it on fraud like they did in 2013”.
“Just before GE13, Pakatan leaders went all over the country saying that Barisan was going to cheat to win.
“After the election, they said the lights went out due to power failure in certain places while the votes were being counted, extra ballot boxes were brought in to certain places, tens of thousands of phantom voters were flown in from Bangladesh, and so on,” he said.
Salleh said these claims were later proven false.
“Even the Bangladesh Embassy denied that tens of thousands of its nationals were flown in to vote in Malaysia, which would require more than 100 chartered planes,” he said.
“And the places where they said the lights went out confirmed that they never experienced any power failure, plus the Opposition workers in the places where they said extra ballot boxes were brought in denied that.”