Thief Minister Stole Election !
By Sarawak Report
A tiny cabal, like thieves in the night, hijacked the machinery of the state and denied the will of the people in Sarawak at the weekend.
Like the perpetrators of a palace coup, a handful of family members, bomoh’s and loyalists mounted an outrageous and blatant rigging of the count. Then, immediately, in an unprecedented act at 10.30pm at night, before even the last votes were counted, they bundled the old Chief Minister into the governor’s office to be sworn back in before the matter could be contested.
But contested it will be. If these plotters and cheats think they can claim legitimacy for Taib, they cannot. All Sarawak knows he is a fraud and that his desperate supporters are seeking to protect the billions they have stolen from the State by keeping him in office.
Sarawak has changed whether they like it or not
The unprecedented and enthusiastic crowds who turned out and rallied for change in all the major towns across Sarawak last week tell us all we need to know about the real election result.
The biggest crowd in all Malaysia’s election history gathered in the small capital of Kuching and made the feelings of the people perfectly plain, as Taib’s armed and aggressive riot police attempted and failed to provoke and harass them.
Police try to disrupt Kuching rally for PR – a record 40,000 peacefully campaigned for the opposition
By contrast the BN rallies failed hopelessly. Sarawak has changed and all Sarawakians know it. Taib also knows it as he sits in his headquarters at Demak Jaya aware that all around him the people of the capital, his home town of Bintulu, Sibu, Miri and across the country have mobilised against him and want him out.
So strong and so obvious was the unity and determination of those population centres that Taib did not dare cheat too heavily and obviously in the urban areas (apart from some outrageous exceptions, like Senadin, see below) and the opposition swept to victory, more than doubling their seats and wiping out BN as a force in the cities.
But, Taib cheated blatantly and obviously everywhere else, determined to snatch the election by abusing his power over the tiny, rotten rural boroughs. The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, colluded in this and he too deserves international disdain and condemnation for allowing one of the most corrupt examples of a sham election to ever take place.
He will get that condemnation. Sarawak Report is invited, together with other observers of Malaysia’s shameful actions in Sarawak, to report to the UN’s Human Rights commission imminently in Geneva and we will tell exactly what happened.
The facts will be made known
Because Taib is a known and serial election-cheater his tactics were anticipated and they have been widely noted and recorded. Reports are being carefully compiled and Sarawak Report will be covering the information as it is gathered over the coming days. Much of this election is going to be contested and a re-election will be demanded.
Today PKR leader YB Baru Bian, who was one of just three PKR members who managed to get a seat, despite massive attempts to destabilize him, confirmed that there had been systematic and widespread cheating. Even so, the opposition won 41% of the acknowledged vote – getting just 21% of the seats thanks to the deliberately skewed and corrupt system developed by BN in Sarawak!
So what forms of rigging were used?
Taib used sister-in-law Gertie to bring the money!
Just consider how Taib went about saving his own skin in Balingian, a constituency where for the past five years he has pillaged the timber and grabbed land from the poor.
We have received inside information that his own sister-in-law, Gertie Chong (widow of Arip) was the one who was charged with bringing the bags of money over from Sibu to bribe and bully the impoverished voters. This is how small and desperate the circle of Taib’s supporters has become.
She handed it out to the PBB workers who then went round the houses distributing a full RM1,000 per door to people, so impoverished by their Chief Minister and State Representative, that they lack even enough barrels to capture sufficient rainwater to drink.
Taib’s ‘development’ has caused the pollution of their rivers and streams – they would dearly love him gone.
But, Gertie brought them RM1,000 per door! Last election it was only RM50 ! More than anything, the wild inflation of Taib’s bribes tells you the level of his deep unpopularity.
The Shin Yang connection
And where did this money come from? It came from Shin Yang. The crony timber and plantation company which has relied on Taib for the fat concessions that have turned its owner Ling Chiong Ho from being a barge handler in Sibu, working for Taib’s brother Onn Mahmud’s Achipelago shipping monopoly just a few years ago, into a multi-millionaire.
So, of course Shin Yang had to cough up. As far as Taib was concerned he was calling in favours – the sort of favours that gangsters call in. Just look at the evidence on Shin Yang’s palm concessions alone, all handed to them via private deals with Taib Mahmud’s Resources and Planning Ministry.
