254. ILLEGAL Federal and State Governments for decades.

In GE13, the Gazette was used twice to publish frauds in results of the seats contested. 

 

 Although the law states that the electoral rolls, once gazetted, cannot be challenged, there’s nothing in the law that states that the gazette itself cannot be challenged. A gazette is not law but merely a government announcement. It cannot be the intention of the framers of the Federal Constitution and the intention of Parliament to allow the gazetting of tainted electoral rolls. This raises questions on the legitimacy of the Sabah Government since 1994 and the Federal Government since 2008.

 

Putrajaya, Court cannot be party to illegality

Joe Fernandez

 | December 17, 2014

The public perception is that the Federal Government has been party to all sorts of illegalities.

COMMENT

 Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has announced the Terms of the Reference (TOR) for the two committees recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) Report released recently in Kota Kinabalu and Putrajaya.
These TORs cannot be a repeat of the same modus operandi for the RCI where the Panel was asked to do its work with their hands tied behind their backs.
No matter what the latest TORs, the bottomline is that Putrajaya and/or the Court, in law, cannot be seen as party to any illegality.
The prognosis is not good.
Zahid himself courted controversy when he declared, just before the TORs were announced, that the Government and the National Registration Department (NRD), among others, were not directly or indirectly involved in the ICs in exchange for votes scam in Sabah.
The RCI Report does not say that.
Former UMS Vice Chancellor Professor Kamaruzaman Ampong, who was a member of the RCI Panel, did tell the media in Kota Kinabalu that the Panel never said the Government etc was not involved. He asked the media: “Can you point to even one sentence in the Report where we said that the Government was not involved?”
The Report makes it clear that in all probability, Projek IC – under whatever name, Mahathir or whatever – existed, presumably an ICs in exchange for votes scam.
Even if the Report did not venture the probability theory, official statistics show that there are 1.7 million foreigners in Sabah — there may be more — against 1.5 million locals. It’s anyone’s guess how many of these foreigners are holding blue ICs without citizenship, how many have been issued citizenship without just cause and excuse and how many of them are on the electoral rolls.
Bingkor Assemblyman Jeffrey Kitingan estimates that as many as a third of the nearly 900,000 voters on the electoral rolls in Sabah are “illegals”.
Activist Dr. Chong Eng Leong, who wrote Lest We Forget – Issues of Sovereignty in Sabah, estimates that at least 200,000 voters on the electoral rolls are “illegals”.

Although the law states that the electoral rolls, once gazetted, cannot be challenged, there’s nothing in the law that states that the gazette itself cannot be challenged. A gazette is not law but merely a government announcement. It cannot be the intention of the framers of the Federal Constitution and the intention of Parliament to allow the gazetting of tainted electoral rolls. This raises questions on the legitimacy of the Sabah Government since 1994 and the Federal Government since 2008.

The extent of political directives involved in the presence of the 1.7 million foreigners in Sabah must be probed for the extent of being party to any illegality.
It’s naïve to assume that hundreds of thousands among the 1.7 million can get their hands on blue ICs and/or citizenships purely because of greed on the part of some people, the so-called syndicates included, and without any political directives facilitating the process.
Not all foreigners have intention of stealing the country from Orang Asal.
Even if we assume the so-called syndicates and greed among certain parties explain the ICs in exchange for votes scam, does this mean the tainted documents can continue to be part of the NRD data bank and the electoral rolls?
Are the TORs merely about ensuring that bygones should be bygones and that the emphasis should be on preventing the ICs in exchange for votes scam repeating itself in the future?
Judging from the way that the latest TORs are worded, Sabahans may be forced to live with the hundreds of thousands among the 1.7 million who are not among those in the state legally, with work permits, and merely want to earn an honest living and depart some day for their homelands. This latter group is that which has no intention of stealing the country from the Orang Asal in particular.
That brings us back to the issue of Putrajaya and/or the Court being party to an illegality in Sabah!
The public perception since 1963 is that the Federal Government has been party to all sorts of illegalities in Sabah, beginning with the insertion of Article 1(1) in the Federal Constitution reducing the status of Sabah and Sarawak from Equal Partners with the peninsula to the 12th and 13th states in the Malayan Federation (now known as the Malaysian Federation but refers to the Malayan Federation).
Then, we have the controversial air tragedy that took the lives of 1st Sabah Chief Minister Donald Fuad Stephens, the “seizure” of the oil and gas reserves, the abuse of the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), the ousting of the PBS Government, the Projek IC scam, the Sedition Act and beyond.