Kota Kinabalu (28/2): Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s Tuaran division expressed doubts that the Electoral Roll will remain clean as stated by the Election Commission (EC).
Its Chairman, Haji Ansari Abdullah said the State Election Commission Director, Md Derus Ismail was quoted as saying that “the rolls will be used minus any element of phantom voters, with the exception that one or two voters in the list could still remain when they are already dead or have gone elsewhere”.

However, Ansari recalled the 2004 General Election included different lists of voters prepared by the EC as well as “appointment of friends and relatives of BN candidates as election workers, last minute changes on the ban of polling booths by political parties and so on”.
He doubted the problem had been resolved based on his own experience when he checked the electoral roll for P170 Tuaran obtained from the EC recently.
“The first name I checked was that of my late grandmother, Hajjah Rahmatjani bte Shahbandar. She passed away in the last millennium. In the 2004 rolls she was still registered as a voter at Kampung Indai under polling station Nos. 170/10/04 under the IC No HO185774.
“To my shock and horror, in the new rolls somebody had changed her identity card to a new number based on the MyKad system showing her age to be 103!” he said in a statement here Tuesday.
Towards this end, Ansari said Md Derus should explain who was it that changed his late grandmother’s NRIC and that of numerous other voters in Tuaran.
“Is it the National Registration Department (NRD) or the EC? Surely it was not my late grandmother. I will not be surprised if someone will come during the next polling day armed with dubious documents to cast vote for deceased persons,” he said.
Ansari said his experience in the Likas Election petition and the 2004 general election had haunted him with the burning issue being – “should we participate or boycott the coming election?”