S'wak PKR cries foul over two incidents

Barisan National has won the Batang Ai by-election, but the polling was marred by two alleged incidents according to the PKR. One incident supposedly involved phantom voters and the other was about padlocks on ballot boxes being tampered with.

In the first incident, two 40-seater buses and a van, said to have been used for ferrying voters from various parts of the state, stopped near one polling station, SRK Lubok Antu, where they were allegedly carrying voters there to cast their votes before the polling station closed at 5pm.

According to a PKR leader, Dominique Ng, he received a telephone call from a party member telling him that the vehicles were used for ferrying what he believed to be phantom voters.

By the time, the PKR leader and his supporters arrived at the scene, one of the buses had taken off with its passengers while the other was waiting for its passengers to come out from the polling station.

Ensuring a clean electoral process

Ng, who is the Batang Ai PKR coordinator, lodged a complaint with the local police chief and also a senior election officer.

Later, Ng and other PKR people went to a nearby police station and also had a discussion with officials for about 20 minutes inside the SMK Lubok Antu polling station.

Emerging from the meeting, Ng said that he had a list of 50 of those who boarded the bus and managed to check 15 identity cards. They came from Kuching, Mukah and Kanowit.

The rest did not furnish their identity cards and no one could ascertain whether they were genuine voters or not.

However, these people informed Ng that they were employees of Kemas.

PKR then lodged a complaint that they were suspicious that these people were either phantom voters or they used some other people’s identity cards.

They took action to ensure a clean electoral process especially when the party had complained earlier about the security during the transportation of ballot boxes from 14 polling stations.

The complaint on the ballot boxes was not entertained so PKR decided to purchase separate padlocks to ensure the integrity of these boxes were not compromised.

Ng said that when the boxes were about to be opened later it was found only one original padlock was intact.

Meanwhile, PKR leaders and supporters said they were in state of shock and disbelief at the initial results of the counting involving 15 out of 26 polling districts with a total electorate of 8,129 voters.

Counting started at 3pm after the ballot boxes from the 14 polling stations arrived either by road or helicopter at the tallying centre at Lubok Antu.