KOTA KINABALU – Sabah Pakatan Harapan (PH) youth leaders have urged caution on the automatic voter registration under Undi18, saying foreigners holding dubious Malaysian identity card holders can slip into the electoral roll.
Sabah PH Youth chief Phoong Jin Zhe and Upko Youth chief Felix Joseph Saang said yesterday that the presence of illegal immigrants with Malaysian citizenship in Sabah is real as shown in the report of the royal commission of inquiry on illegal immigrants in the state.
“We fully support the Kuching High Court decision to instruct the federal government to implement Undi18 before December 18 this year,” he said, referring to the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18.
“It is the right move and at the same time done in respect to the constitutional amendment that allows those at the age of 18 to vote on July 2019,” said the statement, referring to the passing of the Constitution (Amendment) Act 2019 in Parliament passed in July 2019 and gazetted in September 2019.
It reduced the voting age eligibility from 21 to 18 years by amending Article 119(1)(a) of the federal constitution.
“But we stress the need of a transparent registration amendment, not automatic registration as this will allow those dubious citizens into the electoral roll,” the two leaders said in a statement yesterday.
They warned that the illegal immigrants becoming voters will be akin to a threat to national sovereignty.
They also urged the government to reissue MyKads, especially in Sabah, so that only those truly eligible will receive identity cards.
“Recalling MyKads is not impossible. The National Registration Department in Sabah has already updated its database at least four times over the years.
“Screening must be stringent and effective so that no dubious citizens will be able to get their hands on a MyKad again,” they said.
According to the Statistics Department, one in every three people in Sabah are migrants. This means that there are over a million migrants currently residing in the state, either illegally or legally.
In December last year, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed had confirmed that there were 1.09 million non-Malaysians present in Sabah. This meant that migrants made up 27.9% of the Bornean state’s residents.
The 2013 royal commission of inquiry on undocumented migrants in Sabah had heard how Project IC, a scandal that saw illegal immigrants being issued identity cards for votes, had propelled the surge in population.
In March this year, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainudin had said that Putrajaya and the Sabah government had decided to take firm action and will no longer make compromises in dealing with illegal immigrants in the state.
He said the move will include deporting them from Sabah, as has been done with over 600,000 Filipino and Indonesian illegal immigrants since 1990.
Hamzah had also noted the state government’s intention that all foreigners wishing to remain in the state must go through the immigration process and comply with the law. – The Vibes, September 10, 2021
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