The incident in Sarawak’s Senadin constituency involving PKR candidate Dr Michael Teo will be presented to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva today.
The disputed results on April 16 will form the spine of a presentation to be made by Sarawak Report (SR) and other observers of the recently concluded 10th Sarawak election.
According to SR blogger Clare Rewcastle Brown, “we will tell exactly what happened (in Sarawak)”.
Citing Senadin, she said PKR was leading by 1,000 odd-votes during the last ballot counting in Miri City Stadium when suddenly a blackout “conveniently occurred”.
The blackout, she said, lasted an hour during which time the Election Commission (EC) continued counting.
“Suddenly they brought in ‘postal’ votes at an illegally late hour and SUPP was declared ‘winners’ with a slim 58-vote majority.
“The EC also announced 158 spoiled votes favouring PKR. The commission refused a recount despite the fact that there was a clear case for it,” she said.
Brown added that the Senadin incident was only one example that SR was planning to present to the UN.
She said SR’s report to the UN would include the “mass disenfranchisement of much of the population in the interior”.
Posts Tagged ‘Sarawak Election
The myths of S’wak polls results
The dust has begun to settle on the 10th Sarawak polls with the BN touting its retention of the two-thirds majority as a victory, while Pakatan Rakyat points to the more than doubling of its seats. This was the most competitive state election in Sarawak’s history and was hard fought by both sides.
BN, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak essentially camped in the state for 10 days to assure the two-thirds, while the opposition also focused is national machinery in Sarawak, bringing in the top guns from Peninsular Malaysia and thousands of party workers.
A closer look at the results show that the opposition has made impressive ground, despite its failure to break the two-thirds threshold. Sarawak is no longer BN’s fixed deposit, and trends in mobilisation and support suggest that it is even more likely not to be so unless Sarawak BN radically changes how it governs.
“I hope for a new Sarawak”
“I was there at the ceramah held in Stutong. I heard your speech and I was very moved by what you said. I hope for a new Sarawak, and a new hope for the young people.
“I am 27 years old and I hope that my generation can learn from you on what it is to persevere and be strong in times of difficulty. Your fighting spirit has made me realise that we young people have taken many things for granted.
“I stood very near the stage and as such, I was privileged to be able to hear and see you clearly. Your speech was moving. I was also there when the police rushed up to try to stop the ceramah from proceeding (right).
“I saw this, and I knew what it felt like to be denied the freedom to voice out. This is how our ideas are suppressed. Fortunately, the unity and cooperation from the crowd prevailed, and we could continue. That made me see and realise something powerful.”
After sticking around for 6 whole terms; they have decided that it’s high time that you are replaced. Losing to a new face who just joined DAP as an ordinary member a month ago, and nearly three times your junior must be very soul humbling.
It’s not your fault really. Everyone just lost touch with you. Your coldness, unapproachability, your high and mighty attitude and most of all your ‘gawkiness’ with people has made your supporters turn away one by one. You were no more the same Old George. No one could identify with you anymore, and many had reservations of where your loyalties stood.
Like the White Rajah, people began to talk about you and you should eavesdrop sometimes to hear some of the ridiculous things they said about you. But then, you were way up there and we knew you hardly noticed or took it seriously. Must be rather lonely at the top?! Seriously, you were a liability and your uncanny attitude to ignore the increasing cries of frustration felt by the people led to your downfall.
Now, you go on to blame the Federal Government for its failure to listen to the grouses of the people, as if you were totally unaware before. You had 6 terms to put things right, but yet you chose to procrastinate. Would an extra term be enough for you to finish where you left of?
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is unlikely to call snap elections after a bruising state poll in which his ruling coalition lost ground to the opposition in a traditional stronghold, analysts said.
The Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition held onto its crucial two-thirds majority after Saturday’s vote in Sarawak but the opposition had its best result for nearly a quarter century in the resource-rich state on Borneo island.
The vote was seen as an important gauge of popularity for Najib, who has dished out money for rural development.
Some observers said it was the most crucial test for the BN since the 2008 general elections when the opposition seized a third of parliamentary seats and threatened the BN’s half-century grip on power.
In Saturday’s Sarawak election the BN clinched 55 seats while Anwar Ibrahim’s opposition Pakatan Rakyat alliance won 15. An independent candidate took one seat. Previously the BN had held 63 seats and the opposition eight.
The two-thirds majority effectively allows the BN coalition to pass legislation without any obstruction.
But political analyst Khoo Kai Peng said Najib had suffered a “massive” dip in the popular vote compared with BN’s performance at 2006 state polls in Sarawak.
Some are asking: If the Sarawakians wanted Taib to go, why did they continue to vote for his party?
The answer probably lies in the physical vastness of Sarawak and the lack of communication access between the rural interior and what we would call “the outside world”. If in the last 30 years, the ruling regime has done little to improve connectivity between the two realms, it could be that such a situation actually works in its favor. Those in the interior are not brought up to speed on political goings-on and so have little interest in politics. They are not provided with amenities like electricity that will give them access to television. Well, even if they had that, the TV channels churn out government propaganda, anyway.
Their concern is with their daily lives and struggles. So when election time comes around, they are not tuned in to the issues of Sarawak, let alone national ones. The ruling regime keeps them where they are so that their votes are ensured. At election time, goodies, including those in the form of money, are dispensed. It has become the norm. Non-partisan observers on the ground reported: “In rural areas, whoever spends more, wins. It’s amazing not a few people in such areas seem to expect something in return for their vote.” This corroborates what the Opposition reportedly alleged – that BN agents gave cash handouts to voters, ranging from RM100 to RM2,000 per voter.
Opposition supporters are disappointed that Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) managed to win only three seats when there was so much hoopla before polling that it would do much better from the 49 it was contesting. That’s a success rate of only 6 percent. But if they were to view it from another angle – that PKR is relatively new to Sarawak, that it had won only one seat in 2006 and now has three, which is a 200 percent increase, there is some cause for hope. Add to that other factors like limited funds, difficulty of penetrating the rural areas, lack of mainstream media coverage, attempts by the police to break up its ceramahs, and the fact that PKR still managed to garner 17 percent of the popular vote, and the hope for future expansion appears brighter.
The 17 percent translates into 117,100 ayes, which when compared to PBB’s 192,785 (28.7 percent) sounds pretty encouraging. PKR was not a washout, unlike the Sarawak National Party (SNAP), which got a paltry total of 15,663 votes (2.33 percent).
General election which has been slated for mid-half of this year may be shelved temporarily until the coalition has digested the post-election analysis for Sarawak. According to UMNO Youth Chief Khairy Jamaluddin, the leadership transition promise in Sarawak must be fulfilled as soon as possible. The speed in which Taib installed himself as a Chief Minister of Sarawak is going to derail the promise.
Najib cannot afford to call a GE without solving the issue of leadership transition and a leader overstaying his presence. However, it is going to be very difficult to force down Taib. His party has just delivered a clean slate in the state elections.
Taib has a firm grip on PBB. Any attempt to replace him with an UMNO friendly CM is going to upset Taib’s faction in PBB and trigger a civil war in PBB. It may even worsen the situation for BN in the 13th GE. I doubt Najib would take this risk. He would not risk losing between 5-8 parliamentary seats in Sarawak by calling for an immediate GE too by June/July. Hence, the stand-off is expected to continue until at least 2013.
Continue reading ‘BN’s popular support drops from 63% to 55%’
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will likely put key economic reforms on ice as he tries to rebuild voter support after his ruling coalition recorded its worst performance in 24 years in a local election in a key stronghold.
Bets are largely off for a snap general election to take place this year, with Najib expected to rethink his strategy of promoting inclusive growth in the Muslim-majority multi-cultural nation to win back the minority vote, analysts said.
In Saturday’s state poll, Najib’s ruling National Front retained control of its stronghold Sarawak, which accounts for a fifth of its parliamentary seats, but the opposition more than doubled its seat tally as ethnic Chinese mostly voted against the government.
Structural economic changes such as further scaling back fuel subsidies, introducing a goods and services tax and reforming a decades-old race-based policy would be relegated in Najib’s list of priorities for now, analysts said.
“After the outcome in Sarawak, Najib will need a general election mandate before making any big moves,” said Ibrahim Suffian, director at the independent opinion polling firm Merdeka Center.
Continue reading ‘Bets are off for a general election this year – Reuters’
As results were announced, a simple comparison in the number of voters between BN strongholds and opposition strongholds was shocking. Most of the seats won by the opposition saw more than 15,000 voters in one constituency, whereas most BN strongholds had significantly lesser voters. The seat of Pending, won by DAP, saw 21,274 Sarawakians voting. On top of that, Bukit Assek had 18,504 voters, Kota Sentosa at 20,559, Pelangan with 20,336 and 18,440 voters at Batu Lintang, all of which are seats won by the opposition. This is a startling contrast when compared to BN strongholds.
Only 8 out of 55 seats won by BN had voters ranging from 10,000 to 13,000. The others were at least 3 or 4 times less than those captured by Pakatan Rakyat, with the majority of them ranging from 5,000 to 7,000 voters. These stellar figures go against the fundamental theory of ‘one vote-one count’ adopted all over the world.
Most countries have a rule that the number of voters in the least-dense constituency must have at least 80% of the number of voters densest constituency. The EC, however, had not only ignored such democratic rules, in fact, they capitalized on and exploited the lack of such rules to advantage for Barisan Nasional. Gerrymandering skills were used to manipulate constituency borderlines as well as number of voters in a seat, in a bid to restrict and hinder the progress of the emerging opposition.
Continue reading ‘BN’s victory in Sarawak not to be proud of’
The Chinese community’s snub of Barisan Nasional (BN) that continued in yesterday’s Sarawak polls from Election 2008 will force Datuk Seri Najib Razak to delay calling for general elections any time soon, say analysts.
The prime minister and BN chairman will also have to fine tune his 1 Malaysia concept to win over the community that is dissatisfied with decreasing control of the country’s economy and the lack of meritocracy apart from shrinking public space for worship and personal expression.
“The 1 Malaysia concept is lost among the Chinese…they still reject BN,” political analyst Dr Agus Yusoff told The Malaysian Insider in an immediate reaction to the Sarawak election results.
BN won 55 out of the 71 seats in the Sarawak assembly, down from 63 it held when the assembly was dissolved last month. The DAP doubled its presence to 12 seats while PKR tripled its representation to three despite contesting 49 seats. An independent also took a seat.
In Election 2008, PR won a total of 82 out of 222 federal seats with the DAP winning 28 seats, mainly in urban areas where there are large communities of Chinese, who decided to throw out BN’s lawmakers for the opposition party’s representatives.
