Vote fraud ‘stole’ 26 Pakatan seats, PKR’s Fuziah Salleh claims
By Ida Lim
PETALING JAYA, May 8 — Fuziah Salleh today complained of possible electoral fraud that had allegedly denied Pakatan Rakyat (PR) victory in 26 federal seats where it lost narrowly.
“We lost 26 seats that are margin of five per cent. It is an indicator that the majority vote for Pakatan is actually translated into seats but it is stolen in that sense,” the PKR vice-president told reporters at the party’s headquarters today, citing the Bentong seat as an example.
Barisan Nasional (BN) managed to retain power in Election 2013 but lost the popular vote to the federal opposition for the first time since the 1969 election.
Fuziah claimed that she was a tipped off to a plot to exchange ballot boxes containing postal votes at the Kuantan police headquarters last Saturday.
“The information I have received, ballot box from early voters will be swapped with exact number of ballot papers inside... with exact number of serial numbers on ballot papers,” Fuziah, who was last Sunday re-elected as the Kuantan MP, said.
Fuziah said she was blocked from observing the police and Election Commission (EC) from taking out the ballot papers and indelible ink from a police cell, saying that the early voting ballot boxes which were stored in the same location were “vulnerable”.
She questioned the move, saying that the EC had previously promised that polling agents of candidates would be allowed to carry out round-the-clock monitoring of the early voting ballot boxes until the May 5 polls.
She also said that there was a high percentage of spoilt votes, adding that the support towards PR among postal voters nationwide was at a low of around 10 per cent whereas it had previously been at around 20 to 25 per cent.
Fuziah said the party was still collecting evidence to prove the allegations of irregularities during polls.
Another PKR vice-president, Chua Tian Chang, said the opposition could only file an election petition 21 days after the polls results are gazetted.
“We are also working with lawyers and friends to file a more general issues about bribery, constitutional matters that have been violated by the EC,” Chua said when explaining that they would file a more general complaint about various issues that had arisen during the polls.
