Election petitions to hold court with ink, bribery and murder drama

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-g On Jul 4, 2013

Besides the murder of Murugan, the opposition’s main grounds in seeking to nullify the electoral results are faulty indelible ink and bribery. Indeed, most of the petitions filed by PR were related to the indelible ink, according to R. Sivarasa, one of the lawyers representing the opposition coalition.

Trinna Leong & Kimberly Yeo, The Malaysian Insider

Among the bundles of affidavits, notes, testimonies and other bits of evidence which make up the 39 election petitions filed by Pakatan Rakyat following GE13 lies the story of K. Murugan.

Or more accurately, his gruesome murder.

His death only merited a dash of ink in the newspapers in the days leading to May 5, and if not for the tireless efforts of his family and PKR’s Vasantha Kumar, it would have been a footnote by now.

Vasantha, the candidate for Tapah, remembers Murugan working tirelessly for him in the tough battle against MIC’s Datuk M. Saravanan. He organised political rallies and worked the ground sufficiently that he got noticed.

He received death threats and was asked to stop campaigning for the Opposition.

He disregarded the threats and did not think twice about leaving his home early on May 1 after receiving a call. That was the last time he was seen alive. His body was found in a river, weighed down by scrap metal. His hands and feet were bound.

Vasantha said: “We believe that Murugan was murdered to intimidate the voters. He was well-known locally and it was his job to organise ceramahs for me.”

This is probably the first time in Malaysian history that murder has been raised as a reason to nullify an electoral result. This is also the first time in history that so many election petitions have been lodged by Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR).

A total of 58 cases has been filed in the peninsular, nine in Sabah and another two in Sarawak by the June 12 deadline.

Given the long and testy period of campaigning and the host of allegations of cheating and vote-tampering in the run up to polling day, it is not surprising that a record number of petitions have been filed.

Also driving this election petition campaign is a deep sense of grievance at being robbed of the ultimate prize: control of Putrajaya.

“The Election Commission (EC) committed fraud when the indelible ink failed,” Sivarasa said.

“The silver nitrate was absent, so the ink didn’t work,” Sivarasa said in explaining why the ink was easily washed off.

In Parliament, Tan Sri Shahidan Kassim, the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, said that the ink really contained a food colouring instead of silver nitrate, the chemical compound that ensures the ink stays on the skin for at least 72 hours.

PR will also file civil suits against the EC for failure to conduct polls fairly.

Sivarasa added that the alleged irregularities that were included in PR’s petitions involved the “suspicious voting pattern in the early voting ballots”. PR questions the validity of postal votes and those submitted by the members of the police and armed forces.

“The ballot boxes are kept for five days without supervision from election observers,” said Sivarasa, pointing to the possibility of vote-rigging.

The petitions also refer to the allegations of vote-buying at various places, including the Bagan Datok seat held by Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

Ahmad Zahid had been accused of spending RM2 million, 10 times the allowed sum for election expenses, after he was caught on video admitting that he offered RM100 in cash and rice to 24,000 people.