The strange case of recycled ICs in Sabah:

Comment by Ong Kian Ming  | published at Malaysiakini.com, 14. June 2012

Many of the problems uncovered thus far by the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (Merap) are not directly attributable to the Election Commission (EC).

The responsibility of issuing identity cards and ensuring that as far as possible the holders of these cards are Malaysian citizens who live in valid residences is under the jurisdiction of the National Registration Department (NRD).

While it would be more reassuring if the EC were playing a more pro-active role by questioning the NRD regarding some of the problems identified, it would be unfair to blame the EC, for example, if NRD were giving out ICs to non-Malaysians, thereby allowing these people to registered as voters.

In this article, I want to highlight a few major problems with the allocation of IC numbers by the NRD to voters in Sabah, a state where many cases of non-citizens being given ICs have been long documented under ‘Project IC’ or ‘Project M’ with the intention of wresting the state government back from Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) after it left the BN coalition just prior to the 1990 general elections.

These examples are especially troubling because it shows active complicity by the NRD in changing IC numbers, transferring IC numbers from one person to another and allowing more than one person to ‘share’ the same IC number.

My preliminary analysis, obtained by comparing voter details in the electoral roll used in Sabah in the 2008 general elections with the electoral roll updated to Quarter 3 (Q3) of 2011, revealed the following problems with regard to the IC numbers of voters in Sabah:

1) The same voter being given a new IC number

2) A voter’s old IC number being given to another voter

3) Two voters sharing the same old IC number

4) Voters with the same name and same date of birth registered in the same constituency

BERSIH June 14,2012 | read full report