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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The People's Tribunal on the 13th General Elections

Wednesday 18 September 2013
Around 200 people from all walks of life have gathered with anticipitation in the ballroom of the EMPIRE HOTEL SUBANG, Selangor, Malaysia this morning starting at 9AM. Ending at 5 something as the panel continued with private viewing of recorded video of a witness who fear repercussion. 

I just set through the first day  of hearing today.

The People's Tribunal on the 13th General Elections established by Bersih 2.0 aims to answer the numerous allegations of electoral fraud and irregularities.

The Rakyat wants to know the truth.

Individuals of great repute from overseas and local have been invited to sit as eminent members of the Panel.

The Bersih People's Tribunal panel members - (from left) Dr Hermen Shastri, Azzat Kamaludin, Yash Ghai, Ramlan Surbakti and Mavis Puthucheary.  The presiding panel members of the Bersih People's Tribunal are Yash Pal Ghai, an expert in constitutional law and Head of the Constitution Advisory Support Unit of the UN Development Programme in Nepal, Ramlan Surbakti (former deputy chairman of the Indonesian Election Commission), Kraisak Choonhavan (president of the Asean Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus, a former Senator and deputy leader of the Democrat Party of  Thailand).
The Malaysian panellists are lawyer and former administrative and diplomatic officer with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Datuk Azzat Kamaludin, Dr Mavis Puthucheary (former associate professor from the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya) and Rev Dr Hermen Shastri (general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia).

Professor Gurdial Singh, (Standing)A law professor  at the University of Malaya and Director of the Centre of Excellence  for Biodiversity Law, is heading the legal team of 40 volunteer lawyers

Ambiga on the extreme  left.

Today, a total of 7 witnesses gave their evidence.

The first witness: YB Charles Santiago, second term MP of Klang.
He told the panel of 60 names registered as voters in a single house address. When he saw the house owner in his investigation, the house owner did not know about the people with those names.
When the EC officers were confronted with the above case, there sort of admitted of such fraud but nothing can be done because they are protected by the ELECTION LAW that once the names have been gazetted, nothing can be done to remove it and the law is so protective and all comprehensive that there is no recourse !

Charles also brought out 12 cases of individuals who have never registered as voters themselves found that their names have been used to register as voters.

He even  found people physically challenged too have been  registered as voters by other .

Dead people are  still in electoral roll

Charles also told us on:

Phantom voters
Owner of a factory reported migrant workers have been asked to vote with offer of RM500.00 each.

2 Indonesions with police vest got into the polling centre to vote, when Permantau volunteers tried to apprehend them, 3 policemen formed a human ring to help them escape.

Truck loaded with BN logo rice were given generously to people near election.

He also shared concerning :
Bus load of people, phantom voters.
18 foreigners except 1 was Malaysian.
Circling the voting station suspiciously. 
The bus window screens were smashed by angry crowd, these people were brought to the police station, police and EC officers did not take any action. Instead 5 ppl among the angry crowd were charged as rioting. The case is pending in court.

He  had the photos of the phantom voters taken, among them A Bangladeshi with indelible ink on his index finger .

Wheel chair elderly disable man helped by daughter on the way to vote.
Daughter was stopped out side the polling centre.
An EC officer instead helped the disable  to mark the cross for BN candidate which is opposite of what the disable man wanted.

Toward the end of the session the panel asked  Charles, why he is working so hard to be a witness since he had won the second term with improved majority.

Charles said:

We want
level playing field .
Election laws are skewed against the opposition.
We want free and fair election.

The second witness:
Mr PY Wong
Civil engineer
Founder of Tindak Malaysia since  2008

He spoke on Design of electoral  frame work purposefully filled with irregularities.

3 areas 
1. System
First-Past-The-Post (FPTP)System can be easily manipulated. 

Malaysia Electoral Reform Programme
compared to 5 nations among them are namely Australia and other countries . The conclusion was Malaysia is :
Better Than Zimbabwe but worst than Timor 
Mr Wong has compiled a book of 
204 proposals how to improve our electoral system.

2. The Management of the Election Commission 
under the PM department 
PM in control 

The whole process is control by the PM.

3. EC members were all ex-civil servants.
They serve the Government of the day
The EC top leaders were Umno members a long time ago, they professed that they can't remember which Umno branch they were in.

EC members ideally should command public confidence - surely not political party members .
They perceive themselves as civil servants instead of non-partisan independent institution officers to serve the Rakyat for free and fair election.

Every things we said about them from their own press statements,  we asked them to verify, but up to date there was no response.

Rules and regulations of election
are unfair.

Advance  voting
By military and police numbering 
110,000. 
Among them,  77,000 are administrative staff. Why all need advance voting.
They are also given option to poster voting.

Postal voters
171,000
not marked with indelible ink. Why?

problems for advance n postal voters, there are numerous.
 
security of ballot papers kept for 6 days
in police station creat huge gap for fraud.

plastic tag to secure ballot box which can be changed is not fool proved .

Campaign period of 15 days is too short for oversea postal votes to return in time . Mr Wong own daughter voted oversea sent home to PY Wong only reached him after 505!

The third educated, cheerful and  pleasant witness who is visually challenged.
She never registered as voter, worked in KL but found her name registered as voter in Tawau, Sabah.

The 4th Witness and other witnesses 
Please go to my Facebook page under my name : Dr Wong Fort Pin


Your scribe at the end of the Tribunal for the day.
 More to follow daily till 22 September .

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