The Election Commission (EC) says it is “unfortunate” that the 13th general election will be held before the completion of the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on immigrants in Sabah as it can only  clean the electoral rolls after the end of the inquiry.

“We have the power under the Registration of Electors Regulations (to clean the electoral roll) if it (irregularity) is proven in a court of law, and the RCI is something like a court, then of course we will act accordingly.
 
NONE“So if the election comes before the conclusion of the RCI, it is just unfortunate, even if we have whatever number of dubious voters,” EC deputy chief Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said at a briefing at the Foreign Correspondents Club Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur last night.

Wan Ahmad was responding to a question on whether the EC was checking the electoral rolls for dubious voters, based on the testimonies given by witnesses at the RCI hearing.

“The moment we got information (on what had) transpired at the RCI hearing, obviously we were interested to know, because our job is to check who are the dubious voters.

“But you must remember, today a person says something, another day there will be witnesses saying different things,” he explained.

Immediate updates on EC website

Wan Ahmad said it was too early to pass judgment on the findings of the RCI as he was informed that only 30 percent of the more than 250 witnesses had testified at the hearing.

The EC also sent its representatives to observe the hearing and collect information for the purpose of counter-checking the electoral roll, Wan Ahmad added.

It was announced last Wednesday that the tenure of the RCI will be extended by six months to September. It was earlier required to complete its probe by today, March 21.

On Tuesday, DAP claimed that there were over 60,000 dubious voters from the 130,459 "problematic" old identity card (IC) numbers, revealed during the RCI hearing on Jan 16, appearing in the electoral roll for Sabah in the first quarter of 2012.

The list was revealed by an assistant head of the Sabah and Sarawak National Registration Department (NRD) IC division. The records of the owners of these ICs were either incomplete or cancelled.

During the briefing, Wan Ahmad also assured journalists that key information pertaining to the election would be updated on the EC's special general election website as soon as it was confirmed.

He expects the full candidate list to be published on the website as early as 11am on nomination day, while the first balloting results from constituencies will be published before 8pm on polling day.

Wan Ahmad is also confident that with the improvement of the EC's communications network and the website, Malaysians will know which coalition has obtained the majority to form the next federal government before midnight.