PAS demands Suhakam inquiry on postal votes

PAS has submitted a memorandum to the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) asking for a public inquiry on the postal votes dispute in the Bagan Pinang by-election.

"The postal votes system is not transparent, is easy to manipulate and against democracy," claimed PAS Youth chief, Nasrudin Hassan (right).

"We have lodged police reports, complained to the Election Commission (EC) and now we are resorting to Suhakam.

"We will take this to the international level, should there be no further action."

According to the party's postal vote committee chairperson Suhaizan Kaiat, statistics from the Defence Ministry showed that the ballot boxes numbered 14, 15 and 16 were suspicious as there were zero votes for PAS.

"It is simply not reasonable that these armed forces personnel, who are close to retiring and are deemed critical of Barisan Nasional (BN) did not vote at all for PAS.

"They are also more likely to support PAS as they have almost been relieved of their duty in the forces," he said.

Commissioner N Siva Subramaniam (left) said Suhakam has made numerous recommendations on how to run a fair and free election.

He said postal votes can be tampered with and that there must be some mechanism in place to prevent such irregularities.

"Postal votes should be restricted to army personnel who are on duty off-base and diplomats who are based out of the country," he said.

"We will raise this memorandum in our next meeting to decide on a public inquiry."

Other grouses

PAS also brought up other allegations such as the issue of postal vote manipulation, BN ministers campaigning in the army camps, the alleged 253 non-local postal votes and other similar irregularities.

Further, a confession from one ‘Pak Abu Kassim' was also highlighted by PAS.

Suhaizan said that ‘Pak Abu Kasim' was an ex-sergeant in the army who confessed to voting on behalf of other army personnel for BN.

"This shows that the postal vote system is easily manipulated," he said.

PAS also claimed that there were irregularities in the method of distributing the voting slips.

"There was even one incident where we found out that the voting slip was given to the voter by several army personnel at a mini market," Nasrudin claimed.

BN won the by-election with a huge majority - it's candidate Isa Samad bagged 8,013 votes to 2,578 votes for PAS.

Nasrudin further claimed that the majority was obtained because of the postal votes and should be deemed as "morally tainted".