Day: January 16, 2013

‘We gave Muslim foreigners IDs to vote’
Free Malaysia Today
FMT Staff | January 16, 2013

Sabah NRD director tells the RCI that he was personally instructed by Megat Junid Megat Ayub to recruit new voters.

KOTA KINABALU: A former National Registration Department (NRD) officer told an inquiry here that he took part in a project to give foreigners here identity cards so that they could vote in an election in the 1990s.

Mohd Nasir Sugip, who was detained under the now repealed Internal Security Act (ISA), told the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) he was part of a top secret operation dubbed ‘Ops Durian Buruk’ (Operation Rotten Durian) on the instruction of his bosses in the department.

He claimed the operation ran from 1992 to 1995 and said the instruction to furnish the foreigners with identity cards so that they could vote came from the state Election Commission (EC).

“At that time, Sabah SPR director Wan Ahmad handed over a list of 16,000 names to be made into ‘bumiputera Islam’ voters.

“My boss, Sabah NRD director Ramli Kamarudin, then verbally told me to execute this project,” he said.

Mohd Nasir said three other individuals were present when the instruction was issued but their names could not be immediately ascertained.

He said he followed the instructions given to him and recruited other officers at the district level for the operation.

Based on a list of names provided by the EC, foreigners were issued with new identity card numbers that contained their date of birth, photographs and names and all were mostly from Sandakan, Tawau, Sempoerna and other parts of the state, he said.

“The list consisted of Filipinos and Indonesians who were Muslim and aged above 21 years,” Mohd Nasir told the inquiry. Continue reading “RCIII in Sabah – Integrity of Election Commission and National Registration Dept? (4)”

‘NRD’s G17 processed over 100k blue ICs for foreigners’
Nigel Aw
Malaysiakini
7:22PM Jan 16, 2013

A special unit dubbed G17 operated out of the Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) headquarters in Kota Kinabalu beginning 1990 and was responsible for processing the application forms for some 100,000 blue identity cards for immigrants, the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on immigrants in Sabah was told today.

Kee Dzulkifly Kee Abdul Jalil, who was part of the unit, said he was tasked to write down the names and numbers on the blue identity cards that was then done manually before they were shipped to Kuala Lumpur.

“I wrote down the names according to what is in the application forms that were given to us,” he said, adding that the unit processed an estimated 100,000 such identity cards.

Furthermore, he said his unit was also responsible for issuing letters of approval for birth certificates, which he estimated the unit had produced some 200,000 for the children of immigrants.

“This approval letter would allow them to get hospitals or district office to issue them with a birth certificate,” he said. He admitted to being paid RM80,000 for his work. Continue reading “RCIII in Sabah – Integrity of Election Commission and National Registration Dept? (3)”

Dr M’s right-hand men implicated in Sabah IC scam
Nigel Aw
Malaysiakini

Two of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s closest confidantes were today implicated by witnesses testifying before the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) into the alleged citizenship-for-votes scam in Sabah.

A former Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) officer testified that he and the others stayed at the house of Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin (right), who was then Mahathir’s political secretary, when they were roped in to issue blue identity cards to the immigrants.

Yakup Damsah, who was then Tamparuli NRD chief, told the RCI that he and the other NRD officers were flown from Sabah to Kuala Lumpur, from where they worked out of Aziz’s house in Kampung Pandan.

“After receiving instructions from then-Sabah NRD chief Abdul Rauf Sani, we were ordered to go to KL and were placed at Pak Aziz Shamsuddin’s residence in Kampung Pandan,” Yakup said.

He said they were tasked to sign the identity cards that were to be issued to the immigrants, which were subsequently laminated at the NRD headquarters in Petaling Jaya and shipped to the Kota Kinabalu NRD for distribution. Continue reading “RCIII in Sabah – Integrity of Election Commission and National Registration Dept? (2)”

(1) Ex-NRD man says ordered by Megat Junid to let immigrants vote
UPDATED @ 06:21:55 16-01-2013
By Boo Su-Lyn
The Malaysian Insider
Jan 16, 2013

KOTA KINABALU, Jan 16 — A former National Registration Department (NRD) official accused the late Tan Sri Megat Junid Megat Ayub of ordering him to issue NRD receipts enabling illegal immigrants in Sabah to vote in the 1994 state election.

Former Sabah NRD director Ramli Kamarudin said Megat Junid, then the deputy home affairs minister, had told him that the NRD receipts were to match the names and IC numbers of registered voters.

“We gave them (immigrants) RM20,” Ramli told the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants here today.

“We teach them how to vote. We gather them in a house. We send them by bus to the polling stations. Then we send them back and we collect the receipts. The receipts are just for voting. We did not give them identity cards,” he added.

Ramli said that about 200 NRD receipts were issued in five or six state constituencies each in Sabah that were considered “black spots that were difficult for the government to win.”

“One area maybe 400,” he said.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister who was in power from 1981 to 2003, has been accused of spearheading the so-called “Project IC”, in which citizenships were allegedly given to immigrants in exchange for their votes. Continue reading “RCIII in Sabah – Integrity of Election Commission and National Registration Dept?”

The latest Malaysian Internet phenomenon when the video clips of “Listen, listen, listen!” diatribe of a 1Malaysia activist, Sharifah Zohra Jabeen rebuking second-year law student Bawani KS went viral is in fact a reflection of the double failure of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s two most important policies in his four-year premiership:

• Firstly, his “transformation” programmes, whether government, economic, political, educational or social which are all predicated on the principle that “The era where the government knows best is over”.

• Secondly, his signature 1Malaysia policy to create a Malaysia where every Malaysian perceives himself or herself as Malaysian first and by race, religion, geographical region or socio-economic background second.

If Najib’s various transformation programmes are to have any hope of success, they must be based on a two-way communication and dialogue between the government and the governed and not on a “Listen, listen, listen!” one-way traffic imposed by the government on the governed.

Is Najib and the UMNO/BN government prepared to “Listen, listen, listen”?

Clearly not so. Or the chief economist of Bank Islam, Azrul Azwar Ahmad Tajudin would not have been suspended following media reports on a presentation he made at the Regional Outlook Forum in Singapore last Thursday predicting a narrow victory for Pakatan Rakyat in the 13th general elections. Continue reading “85-Day Countdown to 13GE: Najib – Listen, Listen, Listen!”

By Martin Jalleh

— Izham Ismail
The Malaysian Insider
Jan 15, 2013

15 JAN — Semalam, kita digemparkan oleh sebuah video yang disebarkan di YouTube, memaparkan perjalanan sebuah forum yang diadakan di Universiti Utara Malaysia. Forum tersebut bertajuk “Seiringkah Mahasiswa dan Politik” dan perkara yang mengejutkan adalah tindakan panel forum terbabit, Saudari Sharifah Zohrah Jabeen yang memberi respon kepada pertanyaan pelajar UUM, Bawani dengan cara yang agak keterlaluan.

Berikutan daripada video ini, pelbagai reaksi telah diberikan oleh semua pihak terutamanya para mahasiswa. Majoriti mahasiswa merasakan bahawa perkara seperti ini tidak seharusnya berlaku apatah lagi tujuan forum tersebut diadakan adalah untuk menjadi medium interaksi dalam kalangan mahasiswa dan ahli panel berhubung isu-isu politik. Malah, selaku Presiden Suara Wanita 1 Malaysia, sebuah NGO, tindakan tersebut sememangnya tidak boleh diterima dan secara peribadi, saya masih tercari-cari rasional saudari Sharifah bertindak sedemikian.

Saya tidak mahu mengulas dengan lebih terperinci tentang intipati kenyataan Saudari Sharifah kerana saya percaya, semua sahabat mahasiswa sudahpun menonton video ini dan mendengar dengan jelas “hujah” yang diberikan oleh Saudari Sharifah. Perkara yang ingin saya tekankan adalah berkenaan soal integriti Saudari Sharifah yang saya kira tidak menggambarkan profesionalisme yang sepatutnya, sesuai dengan status beliau selaku seorang Presiden.

Saya percaya dan sentiasa akan percaya, semua orang mempunyai hak untuk menyatakan apa yang dirasai. Segala firasat, teori, pandangan mahupun kritikan sewajarnya diberikan ruang yang adil untuk disalur dan dikongsi. Apatah lagi, dengan adanya forum sebegini, soalan-soalan “panas” memang merupakan sesuatu yang pasti dan atas sebab itulah, ahli panel perlu bijak menangani.

Selaku mahasiswa, kami sentiasa mempunyai aspirasi yang tersendiri. Biarpun kami mungkin berbeza ideologi sesama sendiri, bernaung di bawah berlainan panji, waima menjadi ahli fikir neutralisasi, ada perkara yang kami kongsi merentas seluruh universiti. Kami berkongsi bahawa hak mahasiswa itu perlu dibela, suara mahasiswa itu perlu dijaga, malah hati, maruah dan pendirian mahasiswa itu perlu diutama. Atas dasar inilah, pelbagai forum atau debat dilaksanakan di peringkat universiti agar medium ini diangkat sebagai saluran idea mahasiswa sekaligus menjunjung semangat demokrasi.

Namun, sayangnya hal ini seolah-olah tidak difahami oleh Saudari Sharifah. Continue reading “Dengarlah (Listen)”

By Martin Jalleh

― Darren Nah
The Malaysian Insider
Jan 16, 2013

JAN 16 ― Malaysians all over the globe are pouring spiteful derision at an unknown, supercilious lady, Shahrifah Zohra, whose bubbling partisan affinities and inability to address the contentious issues posed by a contrarian student, Bawani KS (now an overnight sensation), led her to do what all noisome vixens do: Raise a whole lot of malarkey and hullabaloo about monkeys, cows, goats and, yes, even sharks.

Her bestial [pertaining to beasts] diatribe came in an interminable, rapid fire succession. Shahrifah Zohra went from calling Ambiga (a Malaysian public figure fighting for free and fair elections) an anarchist, to asking the student, Bawani, to leave the Malaysia given Bawani’s dissatisfaction, and to then doling out Galaxy Notes gratuitously to a body of passive, browbeaten students who was indifferent to the whole Orwellian mis-en-scene, and merely parroted affirmatives and clapped in support of both sides. In Shahrifah Zohra’s deluge of half-baked, quasi-educated Malay-English creole verbiage, many might mistake her fulmination to be a truculent message sponsored by the Selangor Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).

However, Shahrifah Zohra does artfully credit Ambiga, the “anarchist,” with one thing: enlightening Malaysians to human rights, which in this case, it so happens to be the right of free speech. Shahrifah Zohra, of course, in trumping the right of every individual to free speech, does not hesitate to remove her opponent’s (Bawani’s) microphone, and quickly proceeds to up the volume-ante to an audibly deranging holler.

Aside from the (hopefully) non-permanent ear damage that Shahrifah Zohra’s twenty-minute harangue has caused, it is very odd that Shahrifah Zohra should undermine her own case by saying that “it is my human right to speak, and you to listen” (paraphrased). Continue reading “Listen to Shahrifah Zohra”