Malaysiakini
12:39PM Mar 22, 2013

DAP election strategist Ong Kian Ming has urged the Election Commission (EC) to investigate the existence of old red and green identity card numbers in the electoral roll.

While acknowledging that the holders of these old identity card (IC) numbers may have since gained citizenship, Ong pointed out the fact that they were found in constituencies with large numbers of IC numbers deemed “problematic” by the National Registration Department (NRD) was a cause for concern.

“When we investigated the latest electoral roll of the fourth quarter of 2012, we found that there were 7,029 voters with old identity card numbers belonging to the red IC range and 446 voters with old IC numbers belonging to the green IC range.

“This means that there could potentially be 7,475 people who are non-Malaysian residents and not eligible to register to vote but who have been put on the electoral roll,” Ong (left) said.

His checked the electoral roll for old red identity card numbers from H6000000 to H6040000 and old green identity card numbers H8000000 to H8040000, which were provided by Sabah and Sarawak NRD IC division chief Ruslan Alias during the royal commission of inquiry on illegal immigrants in Sabah.

“As such, we call upon the NRD and the EC to conduct an immediate joint investigation into these 7,475 ‘red’ and ‘green’ voters to verify that these registered voters who were once – or perhaps still are – non-Malaysian permanent and temporary residents have been granted citizenship through the proper procedures and are thus eligible to remain on the electoral roll,” he said.

Malaysian citizens are issued blue identity cards (now called MyKad), permanent residents get red cards (MyPR) while temporary residents get green identity cards (MyKas).

‘60,000 dubious voters’

On Tuesday, Ong, who is also the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (Merap) director, said 60,653 of the 130,459 old identity card numbers deemed “problematic” by the NRD were still in the electoral roll.

He said the bulk of these voters were in parliamentary constituencies in the east coast of Sabah, the top five being Silam, Kalabakan, Tawau, Semporna and Libaran.

Ong said a similar pattern was found during Merap’s investigation into the red and green old IC numbers in Sabah that were provided by NRD.

“Not surprisingly, the seats with the highest number and percentage of these ‘red’ and ‘green’ voters are also the seats with the highest numbers and percentages of problematic old ICs.

“In fact, the top three seats for ‘red’ and ‘green’ voters and for the “problematic” ICs are the same – namely P188 Silam, P190 Tawau and P191 Kalabakan,” Ong said.

These three seats collectively hold more than half or 52.6 percent of the ‘red’ and ‘green’ voters ,with a breakdown of 1,704 or 22.8 percent for Kalabakan, 1,326 or 17.7 percent for Tawau and 903 or 12.1 percent for Silam.

Ong said it was also found that 20 of such voters, 19 of them ‘red’ IC holders and one a ‘green’ IC holder were located in Kampung Tanjung Labian, which is the site where security forces are battling Sulu invaders.

These voters, he added, were found to have received their citizenship through dubious means and should be removed from the electoral roll in the interest of a fair election in Sabah.