Fraud fears

Electoral watchdog groups in Malaysia said yesterday the voter list for a general election on May 9 had major flaws, including the existence of a 121-year-old voter, raising the spectre of possible fraud.

About 15 million Malaysians are registered to vote in next week’s election pitting Prime Minister Najib Razak’s ruling coalition, which has ruled the country for six decades, against a resurgent opposition led by former leader Mahathir Mohammad.

A joint study of the voters’ rolls by electoral reform groups Bersih and Engage found more than 500,000 cases of many voters registered with the same address, while more than two million were found to have no address.

The groups highlighted 10 major irregularities they said affected hundreds of thousands of voters nationwide.

“A defective electoral roll will bring into question the legitimacy of the whole election,” they said in a joint statement.

“Despite the huge number of dubious voters discovered, we believe these preliminary findings are just the tip of the iceberg.” The study found some cases in which dead voters were re-registered, and one voter whose birth year was listed as 1897.

In one example, the study listed numerous cases of multiple people registered at the same address in the parliamentary constituency of Bagan Datuk, held by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.