KUALA LUMPUR, June 16 — MCA’s Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong rubbished claims of “phantom voters” in the Ayer Hitam parliamentary seat where he pipped DAP’s Liew Chin Tong by 303 votes, asserting today that his fourth win was legitimate and due to his hard work.
Wee released detailed data from the 14th general election (GE14) on his constituency and the two subordinate state seats — Yong Peng and Semarang — in his bid to “stop those trying hard to discredit me whilst insulting the choice of my constituents by alleging instances of phantom voters”.
“The so-called 2,478 phantom votes alleged by certain irresponsible parties is absurd.
“Otherwise, for the interest of justice and electoral fairness, why aren’t Yong Peng and Semarang election result being challenged by the losing candidates?” the MCA deputy president said in a statement today, without naming the accusers.
In Ayer Hitam during GE14, Wee received 17,076 votes while rival candidates Liew and Mardi Marwan both took 16,773 votes and 4,975 votes respectively.
The state seat of Semarang was won by Wee’s Barisan Nasional colleague Datuk Samsolbari Jamali in a three-corner fight against Pakatan Harapan and PAS with a majority vote of 5,842, while Yong Peng was won by Pakatan Harapan’s Chew Peck Choo in a three-corner fight against BN and PAS with a 5,089 vote majority.
On June 12, Liew filed an election petition to challenge the Ayer Hitam results.
Today, Wee broke down the details for the seats of Ayer Hitam, Yong Peng and Semarang to support his insistence that it was absurd to allege phantom voters were involved, as the tally of ballot papers at both the parliamentary seat and state seats were similar.
He noted that the Election Commission’s (EC) final tally showed a combined 39,485 ballots were issued for both Yong Peng (21,113) and Semarang (18,372), with the total number of ballots cast 39,393 and while 92 were issued but not cast.
As for Ayer Hitam, there were 39,474 ballot papers issued with only 39,380 cast and with 94 other issued ballot papers not cast.
He noted that the Ayer Hitam seat had 556 spoilt votes, while the two state seats had a combined 542 spoilt votes, which is a difference of 14 votes.
“It is not difficult to see that the ballot papers tally of the state seats correspond with the parliamentary seat. In fact, there are 13 fewer votes cast in the parliamentary seat than the two state seats combined,” he said.
Wee also sought to refute multiple versions of the final turnout tally for the seats, noting that one such claim of a 78.7 per cent turnout or 36,346 of the 46,157 total registered voters was untrue.
He instead listed the voter turnout rate for Ayer Hitam as 85.5 per cent (39,474 out of 46,157 registered voters), Yong Peng as 84.78 per cent (21,113 out of 24,903 registered voters), Semarang at 86.44 per cent (18,372 out of 21,254 registered voters).
“These numbers were obtained from the 94 voting streams and verified by polling and counting agents of all three candidates. There is simply no room to suggest otherwise,” he said of the figures he used for his calculations.
He said it was unfortunate that the continuous spread of malicious accusations online against him may actually sway some people “despite their apparent absurdity”.
“It is regrettable that there are still some groups who are just not willing to accept the election results and conniving to unseat the sole Chinese opposition MP from MCA and to prevent him from raising issues pertinent to the Chinese and multi-racial Malaysian community in the Parliament,” he said.
He also questioned Liew’s rationale of reforming the electoral system through the election petition, arguing that such reforms should instead be carried out through the EC and administrative system.
“I won the seat legitimately through many years of hard work and commitment in the Ayer Hitam constituency. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that the loser has his right to file a petition. Fret not, the truth will prevail,” Wee concluded.
