Rembau’s PKR candidate Badrul Hisham Shaharin is considering a legal challenge on the result for the parliamentary constituency which was won by Umno Youth deputy chief Khairy Jamaluddin.
Speaking at a press conference held at the Chinese Assembly Hall in Kuala Lumpur today, Badrul (photo) said he was far from satisfied with the final outcome of the result for the seat.
He said that the initial count showed that he had won the seat by a razor-thin majority of 141 votes.
A recount however saw Khairy, also the son-in-law of premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, winning by a staggering difference of 5,000 votes.
For PKR, this stark gap came in as a shock and consequentially became a solid basis for suspicion.
“(And) there were (also) irregularities in the vote counting procedure. The Election Commission (EC) did not issue the ‘Form 14' to us when it was compulsory to do so,” said the PKR supreme council member.
Explaining on the matter, Badrul said that the Form 14 was an extremely important procedure as the form was one of the many measures that was in place to prevent vote rigging.
Form 14 contains the number of total voters for a particular polling station and once the vote counting has been finalised, the form will be the official indicator of the number of votes designated for each candidate.
If the form was not issued, the results could not be considered as an official one but most importantly, it gave way for manipulation as the number of votes may be added in favour of a particular candidate.
It is compulsory for the form to be issued from each polling stations to each of the candidates’ counting agents stationed there.
BN’s acts of hooliganism
“We will talk to our lawyers and will consider issuing a petition to challenge the results and call for a re-election,” said Badrul.
One of Badrul supporters then added that the matter of Form 14 not being issued itself was enough to nullify the Rembau election results and they will definitely be looking into the possibility of doing so.
Besides allegations of electoral fraud, Badrul also took a shot at Khairy and BN by claiming that the constituency’s campaigning period was marred with BN hooliganism.
“There were various instances where our posters, banners and supporters were harassed by Khairy’s supporters,” he said, adding that there were more than 20 police reports lodged by him and his supporters as a result of alleged BN aggression.
He also alleged that Khairy’s campaigning cost had exceeded the quota allowed by the EC and also accused the latter of using government machineries like schools to campaign.
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