Sabah speaker: Why should Anwar be allowed to vote?

(The Star) – Sabah speaker Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak has questioned the opposition’s call for imprisoned PKR adviser Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to be allowed to vote in the upcoming Permatang Pauh by-election.

“The opposition wants the Government to allow Anwar the right to vote. This means Anwar must be given a special exemption from the law.

“What about the other tens of thousands of prisoners? Should they, too, be given the right to vote or does the opposition mean that only Anwar alone must be given this right?” said Salleh in a blog post on Wednesday.

He added that Anwar was in jail during the 1999 and 2004 general elections but that it was not an issue back then.

“So why is it an issue now? And if Anwar is given the right to vote should not in the interest of fairness and justice all prisoners be allowed to vote? he questioned.

He gave the example of prisoners in the United Kingdom not being allowed to vote, adding that this was also the case in Italy, France Greece, Austria, Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Russia, Liechtenstein and Japan.

Salleh added that if the opposition was serious about its call with regard to Anwar, it should call for all prisoners to be allowed to vote. He noted, however, that that would cause other issues to be brought up.

“The tens of thousands of prisoners will not be able to walk to the polling stations all over Malaysia to vote since they are in prison.

“So this will mean they will have to vote via postal votes. And then the opposition will, as usual, raise yet another issue: the issue of fraudulent postal votes,” he said.

Anwar’s daughter and PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar had recently called on the Government to allow her father to vote on polling day.

She claimed that the Home Ministry had plans to allow convicts to vote in elections and said that Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had raised the matter in July 2013.

Dr Ahmad Zahid, has, however, said that far as he was aware, inmates were not allowed to vote.

“However, I will leave it to the Election Commission to decide on the matter,” he said, adding that if it was allowed, ballot papers could be issued to the relevant inmates.

Anwar is currently serving a five-year jail term in Sungai Buloh prison for sodomising his former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan.