SEVERAL national PKR leaders, including central election committee (JPP) members, are giving deputy president hopeful Rafizi Ramli an “unfair advantage” in the Sarawak party elections, said sources in Mohamed Azmin Ali’s camp.

Sarawak will be the last state to vote in the party elections on November 10, which will see whether Azmin retains the No. 2 post or lose out to bitter rival Rafizi.

Some 144,000 PKR members in Sabah voted yesterday.

A source told The Malaysian Insight that it is believed that some leaders are conspiring against Azmin, pointing to two main grouses that the party leadership has failed to address: alleged irregularities in the registration of some 12,000 new members in Julau, Sarawak, and the use of the e-voting system in the state’s rural areas, where internet connection is either poor or non-existent.

State PKR information chief Vernon Kedit lodged a report on October 25 with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission over the alleged irregularities in Julau.

He said he acted after the state PKR had exhausted all avenues trying to get the central party leadership to investigate and failed.

It was reported that MACC officers had gone to the Sarawak PKR headquarters, at the 3rd Mile Maong bazaar, to “collect documents” on Thursday.

The source said state PKR leaders do not believe that MACC will wrap up its probe before next weekend but remain hopeful that the party will reach “some sort of decision”.

“They should not allow the 12,000 new members to vote, pending the investigation into their registration.”

Julau is the home base of PKR lawmaker Larry Sng, a former assistant minister in Abdul Taib Mahmud’s Barisan Nasional administration and later, president of his family-founded Sarawak Workers’ Party.

MACC yesterday raided Sng’s office as part of its probe into complaints of phantom members in Julau. The MP was also contacted by the agency via phone.

Another MACC team visited PKR’s headquarters and a party member was arrested and detained for a day.

Sng, a Rafizi supporter, reportedly boasted during a longhouse gathering about how membership in Julau had jumped from 603 on June 26 to 13,000 a day later.

Kedit made a statutory declaration (SD) that the registration of the 12,000 members was irregular and illegal. According to the SD, 1,310 did not want to be members but were registered anyway, and 65 were re-registered old members.

On Thursday, a former member of the now-defunct Parti Tenaga Rakyat Sarawak lodged a police report in Sibu, alleging that five people who had “registered” as new members in Julau had died a long time ago.

“There is certainly hanky-panky going on in Julau, but PKR is not taking action,” said the source.

Kedit said he lodged the MACC report so that the graft-busters can investigate whether certain party leaders had abused their power by covering up the alleged irregularities.

PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, responding to Kedit’s SD, said he is unable to act because the membership lists for all divisions have been finalised, following the end of the objection period.

However, Sarawak leaders have questioned why he did not act when they submitted their objections before the deadline.

Two written objections were submitted to the party headquarters and they were not acknowledged by Saifuddin, state PKR secretary Nicholas Bawin said.

The source said the insistence that the e-voting system be used in Sarawak’s rural areas, which face internet problems, is another example of Rafizi being given an advantage.

State PKR chief Baru Bian’s Selangau parliamentary constituency and state seat of Bakelalan, close to the Sarawak-Kalimantan border, have poor to no internet service.

JPP chairman Rashid Din said the country has come a long way in terms of technology and there is no going back to using paper ballots.

The PKR polls have been mired in controversy since they started on September 22.

Yesterday, trouble broke out in Keningau, Sabah, with Rafizi alleging that he was assaulted during a ruckus between his and Azmin’s supporters.

The party elections in Sarawak will see voting in 29 divisions. A re-election in seven divisions in three other states will be held the following day. – November 4, 2018.