Do-or-die fight in Sabah and Sarawak

PKR battle for main factions heats up amid criticism of e-voting process

PETALING JAYA: The PKR polls in Sabah and Sarawak this weekend will be a “do-or-die battle” for the main factions running for the party leadership.

With Sabah holding the second largest PKR voter bank after Selangor at 151,380, or 18% of the party’s total 841,000 membership, the state will be most sought by Datuk Seri Azmin Ali and his challenger for the deputy presidency, Rafizi Ramli, to deliver the “killer blow”.

Voting in the peninsula ended last Sunday.

Since its Sept 22 beginning, the polls have been riddled with allegations of a connectivity jammer, missing votes, phantom voters and chaos leading to the suspension of voting in several divisions.

Azmin is said to be leading with an unofficial majority of 1,659 votes against Rafizi as the heated and controversial battle heads to the east.

As things get feverish, several Sabah and Sarawak PKR leaders have called on the party’s central

Vernon Kedit

election committee (JPP) to revert to conventional voting in both states.

They said the JPP should make an exception for the two states due to the poor Internet connectivity and remote locations of many party divisions there.

Sarawak PKR Information chief Vernon Kedit is leading this call.

“The JPP should make a special concession for Sabah and Sarawak divisions to use paper ballots.

“This will be the safest bet, which will rule out any technical issue associated with e-voting.

“Most of our 29 divisions are located in the rural heartlands,’’ Vernon added.

He said Sarawak was notorious for weak and even non-existent Internet coverage, even in towns and city centres on weekdays.

“On a weekend, folks come out to town and signals are oversubscribed.

“How will the e-voting be conducted if Internet coverage on a busy weekend in these isolated towns is congested?” he asked.

Vernon also wanted to know if the JPP would postpone the polls as it did in some divisions in the peninsula.

“But until when would it be postponed? We simply do not have the technical Internet infrastructure to support heavy usage.

“This is the sad reality in Sabah and Sarawak,’’ he added.

Vernon had filed a statutory declaration on Oct 17 alleging that the status of over 1,000 phantom voters in the Julau division was suspect.

The Julau division is headed by Julau MP Larry Sng Wei Shien, a staunch supporter of Rafizi.

In an immediate response, JPP chief Datuk Rashid Din said there would be no return to ballot papers.

“Those missing votes only happened in Melaka and we have deferred the results. That was an abnormal case,” he said.

On the request to use ballot papers, Rashid retorted: “Never! Forget about ballot papers. We will never go back to that.

“There are 10,000 posts being contested and 14,000 candidates contesting. We have come so far technologically.

“If there is no signal, we will go offline and this is why we have cloud storage. We will monitor from the main war room.

“To those sceptical, they can keep a copy of their votes in their tabs. I guarantee that the end result will be honest,” he added.

Azmin’s team is also leading in the battle for the other posts in the Youth and Women’s wings, as well as posts in the central committee.

Wanita PKR deputy chief Haniza Talha of Azmin’s team said a win should be pulled off “with integrity”.

“This is why despite being in the lead, we in Azmin’s team have been the loudest in calling on the JPP to improve the e-voting process.

“There are too many cases of missing votes. The total number of people who took the QR code and went in to vote did not tally with the total of number of votes cast.

“As in the Melaka case, more than 2,000 votes were unaccounted for and JPP only deferred the results after 24 hours. In Ampang, 274 votes were missing. In Pandan, 191 votes went missing.

“We are told that these missing votes are up in the ‘clouds’. Due to poor connectivity, these votes have not come down yet.

“In Kelantan, there were also missing votes, but the results were declared anyway,’’ Haniza added.

The JPP should make a special concession for Sabah and Sarawak divisions to use paper ballots.