KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 — At the 13th general election last year, many of the complaints received from the 150 election observers throughout Sabah centred on illegalities like bribes and the threat to cut off basic amenities if constituents did not vote a certain way.
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 — At the 13th general election last year, many of the complaints received from the 150 election observers throughout Sabah centred on illegalities like bribes and the threat to cut off basic amenities if constituents did not vote a certain way.
Jannie Lasimbang, Bersih 2.0’s Sabah vice-chairman, said many indigenous voters in the state are largely unaware when political parties commit election offences by offering them alcohol and cash, or by threatening to cut their water supply.
“They don’t even know that giving cash is illegal,”Jannie told Malay Mail Online at a recent interview here.
The Pakatan Rakyat (PR) federal opposition pact only managed to win three out of 25 parliamentary seats in Sabah in the last general election: Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan and Penampang which were largely urban areas.
That is why Bersih aims to train and educate indigenous voters who comprise the majority of the electorate in the East Malaysian state.
She added that besides offering Sabahans RM50 in exchange for their votes and providing them beer at the community hall every night during the election, political parties had also threatened to withdraw basic amenities like water and housing for the hard-core poor if they did not vote a certain way.
Village heads were allegedly warned that they would lose their positions if they backed the other party, or if they allowed opposition politicians to hold ceramahs in their villages.
Jannie also said that in indigenous areas like Kota Marudu, for example, voters were falsely told that the companies that had taken their land for plantations belonged to Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
In Keningau, voters were promised land but the land titles were not signed after the election, said Jannie who is also an indigenous rights activist.
“A lot of people don’t know the election laws,” said the former commissioner with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam).
She noted that indigenous voters in rural areas in Sabah lacked access to information and the main source of information is mainstream radio channels and newspapers.
Jannie said she was looking at creating a training module on election laws and on recruiting trainers to educate the indigenous voters in Sabah even though it is a task that has many challenges.
She pointed out, however, that the village development and security committees (JKKK) may prohibit Bersih from conducting their training in the villages because the BN federal government declared Bersih an unlawful society, despite the High Court upholding its legality.
Another challenge is the difficulty getting volunteer trainers who are willing to go deep into the interiors of Sabah, where there are no beds, bathrooms or clean water.
“I worked in the villages for 17 years. There’s no clean water. You have to bathe in the river and the water is dirty because of logging. Or worse, there’s no water during the dry season and you have to go without bathing,” said Jannie.
