Thursday, January 31, 2013

Pre GE 13 Chapter 3: the Sabah stories by numbers

Introduction to the series

The on going Sabah RCI reveal much sensational facts and confirm a lot of rumours and hearsays. Project M or Project IC has completely altered the voters and political landscape of Sabah.

MERAP seeks to compliment the disclosures in the RCI with numbers, statistics and facts.

As mentioned in the MERAP final report published in October 2012, the EC collected a comprehensive data on the "Bangsa" or nationality of individual voters but this data is not distributed to political party.


For this pre GE 13 series, MERAP provide some statistics base on Q1 2012 Sabah electoral roll.

Included in Sabah's Q1 2012 electoral roll totalling 920,610 voters, perhaps 108,033 voters' bangsa could raise one's eye brow, and these voters are mainly found in parliament constituencies of Silam, Kimanis, Kalabakan, Libaran, Papar, Tawau, Sipitang, Beaufirt and Putatan where they make up more than 15% of the total registered voters.


Sabah electoral roll Q1 2012

The "Bangsa" code of the 108,033 voters whom MERAP highlights consist of the following nationalities:


 As reported in the MERAP Final Report October 2012, the vast majority of these voters carry identity cards that state that he or she is born in a Malaysian state.



MERAP cross-referenced the Bangsa and Kod Negeri for selected nationalities and the results are as follows:

*  There are more than 7 thousand, 5 thousand and 2 thousand Filipinos, Indonesians and Pakistanis respectively that, according to JPN, are born in Sabah.

*  There are even 5 Bangladeshies and 1 Burundian who are born in Sabah.

One wonders how many Pakistanis do really give birth in Elizabeth Hospital, Sabah.

In the 1999 Likas Election Petition where Justice Muhammad Kamil Awang ordered former Chief Minister Datuk Yong Teck Lee to vacate his Likas state assembly seat on the grounds that the 1998 Electoral Roll for that constituency was illegal. The  Electoral Roll ruled illegal by the court carried Project IC indentity cards with serial numbers ranging from H0288001 to H0384000 and H0480001 to H0576000 (ref: page 28, "Lest We Forget, Dr Chong Eng Leong).

When MERAP cross referenced the above range to the questionable Bangsa list above, more than a quarter of the 108,333 voters are within the range.

26.2% of these dubious Bangsa voters falls within the range of voter roll ruled as illegal by a Malaysian Court


Stay tune for more facts in the next chapter.