PENANG - Suspicions over the
integrity of a Malaysian government program
popularly known as "Project M" that fast-tracked
citizenship and voting rights for immigrants in
the eastern state of Sabah threaten to complicate
upcoming general elections.
Witness
testimony to a royal commission of inquiry into
the program suggests that large-scale fraud took
place in Sabah in the 1990s. The revelations have
raised new questions about the accuracy of the
country's voter rolls, an issue opposition
politicians and civil society activists have
highlighted at street rallies calling for
electoral reforms.
The inquiry, which was
set up last August, has heard witnesses testify
that government officials loyal to the ruling
United Malays
Nasional Organization (UMNO)
engaged in undercover operations to topple the
then ruling party in Sabah, the multi-ethnic Parti
Bersatu Sabah (Sabah United Party), which at the
time was in opposition at the federal level.
The party was apparently perceived by some
UMNO loyalists to be "Christian-led" and the
covert objective was to replace it with a
state-level coalition that would be more "friendly
to Islam" under the umbrella of the federal-level
ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.
The modus operandi was to fast-track
citizenship rights to foreigners or issue them
papers to allow them to vote in state elections in
1994. In the end, the Parti Bersatu Sabah won by a
slim majority but collapsed after mass defections
of its Sabah state assembly members soon after.
The royal inquiry was called after Prime
Minister Najib Razak realized Project M and its
associated influx of immigrants was one of the
sore points in the pivotal swing state that could
cost the ruling coalition voter support at the
upcoming polls.
Some analysts believe the
inquiry was established to stem a possible tide of
defections after a couple of BN coalition
politicians defected to the People's Alliance
opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim.
Others believe that the inquiry was aimed
at pulling the rug out from under the feet of the
still influential former premier Mahathir Mohamad,
who was prime minister of an UMNO-led government
at the time the clandestine registration of
immigrants was carried out.
The inquiry
has been hampered by its limited terms of
reference, which do not specifically grant the
commission the mandate to identify the masterminds
behind the alleged fraud.
Observers have
also complained that key questions were not being
addressed, including why foreigners had to pay
such a small amount for temporary identification
papers meant for Malaysians who had lost their
identification cards that effectively allowed them
to vote?
Moreover, the outcome of the
inquiry is only likely to be known after the
general election, which must be held by the end of
June at the latest. That means any inquiry
recommendations may not be issued in time to allow
for a review of the national electoral rolls.
One operation that emerged from the
inquiry involved Sabah state-level national
registration department officers issuing
40,000-100,000 Malaysian identity cards to
foreigners. Testimony implicated an aide of
Mahathir, whose residence in Kuala Lumpur was used
as a center to process the cards.
Another
witness testified that in another Sabah-based
operation some 200,000 birth certificates were
issued to foreigners which later allowed them to
apply for Malaysian identity cards.
Implicated officers were later detained
without trial under the Internal Security Act for
up to two years, a move observers believe was done
to put a lid on the clandestine operations.
Rotten rolls In yet another
secret operation, aptly dubbed Ops Durian Buruk
(Rotten Durians Operation), state-level national
registration department officers allegedly
conspired with the Sabah Election Commission to
issue temporary identification receipts that
allowed immigrants to vote.
The chief of
operations said the project was undertaken after a
meeting with the then deputy home minister in
Mahathir's cabinet, Megat Junid, who is now
deceased. Testimony from immigrants who revealed
they had received such papers indicated that they
had voted in elections soon after that.
The officers that headed these two
operations were reported to be previously attached
to the National Security Department in Kuala
Lumpur before being transferred to head the Sabah
National Registration Department. Although the
inquiry focused on events in the 1990s, it is
believed that the registration of foreigners as
citizens began in the 1980s.
The damaging
testimony forced a response from former premier
Mahathir, who ruled the country with an iron fist
from 1981 to 2003. He claimed that the immigrants
who had been registered had been in Sabah for over
20 years and had assimilated to the local culture
and spoke Malay. They were thus eligible for
citizenship, he said.
Mahathir also
attempted to divert attention from Sabah by
suggesting, half tongue-in-cheek, that a similar
inquiry should be held to investigate the granting
of citizenship to one million foreign immigrants -
mainly Chinese and Indians - in the Federation of
Malaya before the country gained independence.
The suggestion prompted an uproar, with
retorts pointing out that independence-era
registration was part of a transparent pact
leading to Independence from British colonial rule
and was hardly clandestine.
The
revelations of the Sabah inquiry have led to calls
for key federal and state leaders who were in
office at the time - Mahathir included - to be
subpoenaed to the inquiry, though due to its
circumscribed terms of reference this seems
unlikely.
The inquiry has underscored
concerns among opposition politicians and civil
society groups about the integrity of the
electoral rolls ahead of the general election,
which is expected to be hotly contested. Those
concerns center on recent significant increases in
the number of registered voters in a string of
federal parliamentary constituencies in states
like Selangor, which is currently under opposition
rule.
In some 20 of parliament's 222
constituencies, registered voters have risen by
between 20%-32% since the last election held in
2008, where the opposition made historic gains by
winning five of 13 federal states. Prime Minister
Najib's Pekan constituency itself has seen a 31%
rise in voters since the last polls. Independent
analysts have also pointed out widespread cases of
multiple registrations, where scores of voters
have been registered at the same address.
The revelations of the Sabah inquiry have
supported the civil society-led Coalition for
Clean and Fair Elections' (Bersih) claim that the
present electoral rolls are badly tainted and
skewed in favor of UMNO. Indeed, some activists
are starting to question the legitimacy of all
elections won by UMNO and BN since 1994.
With so many questions hanging over the
integrity of the electoral rolls, the stage is set
for a crisis of legitimacy if UMNO and its
associated BN parties win again at the upcoming
polls in constituencies that have recently seen
large and unexplained increases in voter
registrations.
Anil Netto is a
Penang-based writer.
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