Is there a 'Project IC' in Selangor, Anwar asks EC

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim wants the Election Commission (EC) to tell whether granting citizenship and the right to vote, as revealed to the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on immigrants in Sabah recently, has also taken place in Selangor.

Anwar said the Selangor government conducted a survey on new voters in the state in the fourth quarter of 2011, and found about 134,000 new voters registered, but they were untraceable.

"Do they fall under the same category as explained during the deliberation of the RCI?"

"We need an immediate response from the EC, now that it has happened in the past and we have evidence adduced to support that argument.

"Can we get the categorical assurance from the EC that this will not happen (in Selangor)?" Anwar asked during a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

The inquiry, now into its fifth day, was told by former senior Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) officers that they were instructed by the Sabah EC to facilitate immigrants to vote in the state elections in the 1990s.

The former officers involved in the operation testified that they provided immigrants with identity card receipts of existing voters or blue identity cards to unqualified immigrants to enable them to register as voters.

A voter audit by Selangor government last year revealed that 28 percent or 134,675 voters newly-included into the state’s electoral roll in the fourth quarter of 2011 could not be traced.

The PKR de facto leader said that there was a misunderstanding that such incidents were confined to Sabah, but claimed that this was not so.

'New voters can vote elsewhere'

"They were given identity cards to vote in Sabah, now they go to vote in Federal Territory, Selangor or Johor. They do not keep to Sabah," Anwar warned.

He then slammed the EC for not giving categorical assurance, until today, that it would maintain a clean electoral roll.

"They said they will try, (but) they have not done so. We are giving them ample notice, and this will not be tolerated by Malaysians,” he added.

However, Anwar does not doubt that genuine citizens have been granted blue identity cards, thus becoming voters.

On Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s denial of the series of allegations levelled against him and his wife by controversial carpet dealer Deepak Jaikishan (right), Anwar merely said Najib should answer those allegations.

Last night, Najib broke his long silence over Deepak's allegations that he and his family members were involved in a cover-up operation linked to private investigator P Balasubramaniam's first statutory declaration, which alleged that the premier had a relationship with murdered Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu.

According to Deepak, he was asked by Najib and Rosmah to coerce and entice Balasubramaniam, now in self-imposed exile in India, to disavow his original statutory declaration.

"It's not true. He is not a credible person," Najib said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur after the BN supreme council meeting.