THE main players in PKR’s chaotic elections have kissed and made up with the results accepted.

But Alvin Teoh Kong Seng, the party’s IT man who helped set up its e-voting system of which PKR was so proud, is now out to clear his name after being arrested over allegations of tampering with tablet devices used in the elections in Sarawak’s Julau division.

Teoh, who is also a PKR central election committee (JPP) member, plans to sue Selangor’s Batu Tiga assemblyman Rodziah Ismail for the police report she lodged against him which resulted in his arrest and four-hour questioning.

“I plan to sue Rodziah for the malicious report made during the elections in Julau,” Teoh told The Malaysian Insight.

Rodziah contested the PKR Wanita deputy chief’s post but lost to Sementa assemblyman Dr Daroyah Alwi.

Rodziah’s report alleged that Yeoh tampered with the tablets used in the polls. She said in the report that she saw Teoh checking each device at the William Mawan stadium polling station in Julau at 2.30pm on November 10.

Teoh, 44, was arrested at the Sibu airport the next day. He was released after nearly four hours of questioning and remains under investigation under the Computer Crimes Act 1977.

Teoh, who has been helping the party elections since 2014, said he told Rodziah and deputy president hopeful Rafizi Ramli on the day itself that he was checking the tables one by one after discovering that one carried the anti-theft application called Prey.

He said voting in Julau started smoothly that day. After each member votes on a tablet, the result is immediately sent online to servers.

“This way, all parties (involved) can see the votes,” Teoh said.

“But we had very poor connection in Julau that day and decided to conduct the polls offline at 10.30am.”

He said everything was in order and by 1pm, more than 700 members had voted.

“But at 2pm, we noticed that one of the 14 tablets had Prey on it. I immediately contacted our cybersecurity consultants and they advised me to check all the others and delete the application.”

He was, however, advised to keep one tablet with the app on it for the consultants to check later.

“At around 3pm, Rodziah came over and I showed her the Prey application and explained what I was doing. I also explained to Rafizi and the other candidates there what was happening.”

In the end, Teoh discovered three tablets with the app while it had been uninstalled on three other tablets. Another six tablets had their data wiped out, he said.

According to him, the Android app was designed to delete all data on an electronic device in case of theft.

“But the number of missing votes was only 19 out of the 1,600 votes cast,” said Teoh.

Teoh added that while Prey could not alter the voting results, it had the potential of putting the election results in doubt if all the data were deleted.

“It can’t alter any result as they (the results) are sent to the servers immediately. That’s why JPP decided to uphold the results.”

The full-time PKR employee said he not only had to suffer the indignity of the arrest and questioning but also had his laptop, an iPad, two iPhones, five pen drives and nine of the tablets used for voting siezed by Sibu police.

“The police said they can’t return them unless Rodziah withdraws her report,” said Teoh.

Prior to the elections on November 10, Julau already courted controversy over its a drastic increase of members from 603 to 13,549.

It was thought that with the deputy president’s race between Rafizi and Mohamed Azmin Ali going down to the wire, the Julau results could have tilted the outcome of the race.

“In the end, despite the membership increase, only 1,600 turned up to vote,” said Teoh.

Azmin reportedly won by some 5,000 votes. PKR did not release the voting numbers for its elections but confirmed the winners and new office-bearers at its annual congress last weekend. – November 21, 2018.