KOTA KINABALU, May 8 — Opposition campaigners in Penampang are upset as the district’s Returning Officer (RO) and her assistant have not released their tags for tomorrow’s Polling Day operations.
Penampang parliamentary incumbent Darell Leiking and Parti Warisan Sabah candidate said his candidate representative Jane Manjaji has been waiting at the district office since 9am to collect the PACA or “polling agents, counting agents” tags.
“I don’t know if there’s a bias or something wrong here, but apparently the BN representative has come in and collected the tags from the RO’s room while she wasn’t there.
“The RO and assistant RO have not been in since 9am until 1pm, apparently because they are at a dewan, having lunch,” he said, referring to the district officer Luvita Koisun and her assistant.
Leiking said that it was unacceptable that the representatives responsible for releasing the tags to all candidate parties to be missing from work for such a long period without being accountable.
He said that over 400 to 420 polling and counting agents for his district are waiting for their tags or they will not be able to enter the counting hall tomorrow.
“If this happens, then we know for sure something is wrong. But it will be too late for us,” he said.
He said he was still hoping that the RO and her assistant would release the tags by 3pm today.
As of 2.30pm today, Leiking said they had yet to receive any information.
