'750,000 people were Project IC beneficiaries by 2010'

SABAH RCI The population of foreigners who had been beneficiaries of Project IC and their undocumented descendants woukd have grown to 750,000 people by 2010, the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into immigrants in Sabah heard today.

Dr Chong Eng Leong, author of a book about Project IC, said this was based on his own research which had started from the early 1990s.

He also said that in the current electoral roll in Sabah, there would be at least “200,000 names that shouldn’t be there”.

Chong (left) also related that the term ‘Project IC’ or ‘Project Mahathir’ was heard by him to be uttered by recipients of the identity cards themselves.

“In 1992, a Filipino was charged in court with holding a dubious IC. When asked how he got his IC, he told the court that it was obtained due to ‘Project President Mahathir’,” Chong said during his testimony to the commission, which lasted for almost four hours.

“In 1999, when I objected to the electoral roll in Likas, one of the voters I objected to appeared before Election Commission officers at a public hearing. When he was asked by the officer about where he got his IC, he also cited a Project Mahathir,” he added.

Chong was the candidate who lost to Yong Teck Lee during the Likas election in 1999 and subsequently challenged the electoral roll and got the election to be declared as a null and void.

He, however, lost the 2001 by-election for the same seat.

Chong was the last person to successfully challenge the electoral roll, as Section 9A of the Elections Act was amended shortly after to disallow any gazetted electoral roll to be challenged in court.

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