PKR POLLS | As the PKR deputy presidency race between Azmin Ali and Rafizi Ramli remains close, concerns are being raised internally over irregularities in the membership list of a large PKR division in Sarawak which can have a huge impact on the outcome. 

Last month, Malaysiakini revealed that the division recorded a 2,147 percent spike in membership in June alone. This was considered a major achievement considering that the Julau constituency is a sparsely populated part of Sarawak south of Sibu with only 25,000 voters. 

Following this, Sarawak PKR had conducted an investigation and uncovered irregularities in the membership list.

Sarawak PKR had attempted to contact 6,474 out of the 13,178 new members of Julau PKR by telephone and found that:

  • 1,310 of those contacted denied having the intention to join PKR or had consented to being a PKR member.
     
  • 237 wanted to be PKR members but never applied to do so.
     
  • 5,018 were uncontactable.

This was affirmed by Sarawak PKR information chief Vernon Albert Kedit in a statutory declaration dated Oct 17 as part of a complaint he had filed with the party headquarters.

Duplicate membership numbers

Although Malaysiakini was unable to verify Kedit's claims, an independent check on Julau PKR division's membership list found that 1,181 entries did not possess unique party membership identification numbers.

There were 584 party membership identification numbers that either appeared twice or thrice.

Therefore, there were instances where a single party membership number was attributed to three different names and MyKad numbers.

To test if such anomalies existed in other PKR divisions, Malaysiakini checked for duplicate
membership identification numbers in three other divisions - Kapar, Hulu Selangor and Pensiangan - with membership figures exceeding 10,000 members.

In these tests, all the membership identification numbers were unique.

Asked how the anomalies in the Julau PKR membership list could happen, Sarawak PKR deputy head See Chee How (photo) said all the 13,000 new members were registered by hand and sent to the party headquarters.

"This is a very serious allegation. I hope the party looks into this," See told Malaysiakini.

Attempts to contact PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution for comments were unsuccessful.

Whole family 'joins' PKR

Meanwhile, there has been a growing number of people who have publicly voiced displeasure after finding out that they became Julau PKR members without their consent.

On Oct 13, the Kuching-based daily The Borneo Post cited one Kaya Usit complaining about how his wife and three children were registered as PKR members in Julau despite not having filled up any application forms or meeting anyone from the Julau PKR division.

Kaya said his family members were registered voters for the Julau parliamentary constituency and questioned if their names were sourced from the Election Commission's database to register them as Julau PKR division members without their consent. 

On Oct 15, the daily reported that investigations by Julau PKR division chief Semana Sawang had let to him meeting three members of Parti Tenaga Rakyat Sarawak (Teras) who are mysteriously in his division's membership list.

The same report cited Julau MP Larry Sng stating that PKR members who are suspicious of the Julau PKR division membership list should not vote. He also urged such PKR members to cancel their membership
at his Julau and Pakan service centres. 

Sng, who joined PKR on May 11, is challenging Semana for the Julau PKR division leadership, a position which the latter has held for two terms. Sng is also a vying for a seat on the party's national leadership council (MPP).

More than half of the registered 25,380 voters in Julau constituency are allegedly PKR members. 

Complaints made

Malaysiakini understands that grievances with the party's membership list have been repeatedly raised by party leaders during political bureau meetings - PKR's executive body - but there appears to be no remedy to fix the problem.

One such complaint was lodged by Semana to the party's secretary-general on Aug 16.

According to See, a team from the party's headquarters was in Sibu recently to investigate the Julau PKR membership situation but the outcome is uncertain.

Disputes over the integrity of the membership, and hence voters list, have led to problems during the election process in Selangor, namely for the Petaling Jaya Utara and Selayang divisions. 

For these two divisions, scrutineers had stopped a significant number of party members from voting on grounds that they were registered as party members of other divisions.

It is expected that party leaders would again discuss membership record discrepancies during the political bureau meeting tomorrow evening.