Election workers at a polling station in Penanti, Permatang Pauh. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Hasnoor Hussain, May 7, 2015.An army personnel was caught “spying” by PKR election workers outside a polling station in Penanti, Permatang Pauh today.
The man had allegedly pretended to be a PKR election worker at the party's makeshift operation centre outside SJK (C) Jit Sin A and B.
After raising the suspicions of election workers there, he was apprehended and persuaded to explain what he was doing.
The man, who was identified as “Sergeant Wong” said he was sent to collect data such as how many people had gone to vote at the school.
Election workers also found that the man had a group named “BN Team” in his WhatsApp conversations.
D. Suhana, 37, an election worker from Tanjung Karang, said the man who wore a “Demi Rakyat” PKR t-shirt had gone to their ops centre outside the school at 8.30am and sat with them.
They thought he was an election worker as well but grew suspicious when he started to take down notes, make calculations and send them via his smartphone hourly, she said.
"We became suspicious at about 10am. He was counting. We are not allowed to make calculations. We only compile the figures on the voters who have come to vote.
"So we began asking questions and he could not really answer. I asked to see him phone and realised that he was supplying information to a BN WhatsApp group.
"If he was impartial, why doesn't he have PKR in his WhatsApp too?" she said, adding that the man also said he was paid RM100 a day.
Around noon, the man was found out and as he was outnumbered, could not run from the ops centre.
PKR vice-presidents, R. Sivarasa and Chua Tian Chang, and the sergeant's superior, a “Major Jazimin”, was then called to the centre to look into the matter.
When asked what the military was doing, Jazimin insisted that army personnel were only despatched to observe the election process for security purposes.
He said there was no order to gather information on voters, denying what the sergeant was caught doing.
Both men also did not show their military identifications when asked by the PKR leaders.
Sivarasa said the situation forced them to lodge a police report since Jazimin could not confirm what the military was doing on polling day.
"It seems that at every polling station there would be someone gathering information.
"The issue here is the sergeant was undercover. What is the role of the military in an election? The military should be independent.
"Since they would not admit to what they are doing, we have to lodge a report with the police.”
Chua, who is better known as Tian Chua, said the military should not be used for intelligence services by Barisan Nasional.
"If they needed to get information for safety and security reasons, they could have asked and we would have cooperated.
"But why would the military need to know how many voters turned up to vote? Why is there a covert exercise to spy on a legitimate democratic process?
"It is a clear cut abuse of power," he said, adding that it was also a violation of military integrity.
"For the sergeant to have that BN WhatsApp group, the link between the military operation and BN is clear."
Sivarasa and Chua then took the sergeant to the Perda police station nearby to lodge a report. They also asked Jazimin to go with them.
The Permatang Pauh parliamentary constituency is a stronghold of PKR and former opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
His wife, PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, is now contesting to retain the seat for Pakatan Rakyat after Anwar is convicted for sodomy.
- TMI
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