FOR as long as she can remember, Kaltsom Abdul Hamid, 61, has lived and voted in the parliamentary seat of Batu in Kuala Lumpur

Which was why the single mother was recently surprised to find that her address had now been changed to one in Seksyen 1 in Wangsa Maju.

Stranger still was her discovery that two of her neighbours, Zahrah Rais and Sharifah Rosmawati Syed Ahmad, are sharing the same address.

The three are among 963 Malay voters living in Batu who have had their addresses changed to Wangsa Maju, so that they will be voting there in the next general election, purportedly to give an edge to Umno, the party most of them support.

“We are certain this is the work of Umno to win seats in the coming election,” said Ravee Suntheralingam, head of PKR’s Taman P Ramlee banch in Wangsa Maju.

The Wangsa Maju parliamentary seat will be contested by an Umno candidate representing the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, which will offer a Gerakan candidate in Batu.

Kaltsom said she believed her address was changed last year, soon after an unidentified man visited her claiming to be offering aid in return for her identification card details.

She said the man paid her RM50 after she handed the man her IC and he took down her details.

Retired fireman Hasim Rasip, 74, said he, too, suddenly found himself to a resident of Wangsa Maju when he lived in Taman Beringin, Jinjang Utara.

However, he said he doesn’t mind being “moved” as he wanted to vote for the Umno candidate in Wangsa Maju.

“I’m willing to be moved to give Umno the victory,” Hisham said in a video recording by researchers working for PKR Wangsa Maju.

Ravee said the fact that Umno was moving its supporters away from Batu was a clear sign that the Malay party was disregarding its coalition partner, Gerakan.

“I don’t understand how Umno can move its partner’s voters from the Batu parliamentary seat to try and capture the Wangsa Maju seat,” said Ravee.

Following an analysis of the voters list released by the Election Commission (EC) in 2016, PKR Wangsa Maju volunteer Lee Wee Tak said a total of 1,429 names on the list of voters in the constituency did not actually live at their registered addresses.

“And beginning 2017, the EC no longer provided is with the data. I’m convinced that if we have the latest data, we will find more voters living outside Wangsa Maju voting here,” he said.

In the last general election, PKR candidate Tan Kee Wong won Wangsa Maju with a 5,511–vote majority over Umno’s Mohd Shafei Abdullah.

Shafei is rumoured to be standing in the seat again in the next polls, which must be held by August. – February 12, 2018.