Less than 24 hours to go, the Likas by-election in Sabah continues to be mired in controversy as one contesting party insisted that nearly 5,000 dubious voters still existed on the electoral roll.

Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) secretary-general Radin Malleh claimed that the Election Commission (EC) has not held any public inquiry to check the 4,871 names of dubious voters which the party had submitted.

Radin said the birth dates of these dubious voters which were recorded on the 1998 electoral roll differed from those on last year's roll.

"However, till today the EC does not want to entertain us," he complained.

Yesterday, the Sabah-based Daily Express quoted EC chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman as saying that if a person gives sufficient indication to be Malaysian citizen through the documents supplied by the National Registration Department (NRD), then the EC would act accordingly to list him or her on the electoral roll.

However, Radin argued that the EC should not depend solely on NRD to validate the authenticity of a person's identity card as it may have been obtained illegally.

Own investigation

According to him, PBS' own investigation into the matter revealed that some of the identity cards possessed by these dubious voters were genuine but their particulars were questionable.

Radin said that over the years he had received many reports and documents from the public who assisted him in investigating this matter.

In 1999, he received a list of 49,270 dubious voters via mail and subsequently lodged a police report.

"Out of that figure, 31,885 were found on the Sabah electoral roll and we do not know how many of those have been deleted from the roll," he said.

He added that to date they have not received any reply from the EC on these dubious voters and no open inquiry was initiated either.

However, Radin said that in Parliament early last year, PBS were told that some 81,000 voters found on the 1999 electoral roll in Sabah were deleted from the 2000 roll.

Numerous reports

Radin said that PBS had lodged numerous reports with the EC, police and NRD on this matter but is yet to see any action taken by the authorities.

When the party sent a list of 322 dubious voters who were suspected to have registered when underaged, the commission's response to that was that only seven of the names appeared on the Likas electoral roll.

"The EC said that after checking with NRD, it was discovered that the seven were above the age of 21 today and therefore qualified to vote.

"But the EC had totally missed the point," Radin said. "It should have asked, how these people could have registered as voters when they were underaged."

Outside voters

Meanwhile, Radin said that it is strongly believed that certain quarters would deploy "outside voters" in order to secure victory.

"Normally these voters will be gathered in several places before being brought to the polling stations in buses," he said.

Tomorrow, 26196 voters, comprising 16,000 Muslim bumiputras, 8,000 Chinese, and 2,000 Kadazandusun and others will cast their votes in Likas.

In the last election two years ago, Barisan Nasional candidate and former Sabah chief minister Yong Teck Lee emerged the victor.

However, the Election Court had ruled last month that the election was null and void since the electoral roll was "tainted with phantom voters".

Subsequently, a by-election was called and this time around it will see a four-cornered fight between Yong, PBS' Dr Chong Eng Leong, Keadilan's Christina Liew and independent candidate, Joshua Kong.