KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 8 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers demanded today an emergency sitting of Parliament over claims that 1,600 foreigners had been given citizenship and voting rights, claiming that if left unchecked it would erode Malaysia’s constitutional monarchy.
PAS vice-president Datuk Mahfuz Omar told reporters today that the permanent residents who were being given “express” citizenship and voting rights “would not appreciate our royalty as we do.”
DAP publicity secretary Tony Pua said the “campaign by Barisan Nasional (BN) and the authorities to turn all permanent residents into citizens, if not monitored, will cause the peninsula to be like Sabah.”
“There, permanent residents who have become citizens outnumber actual locals,” the Petaling Jaya Utara MP said, referring to the claim that BN had given votes to foreigners in the east Malaysian state in the 1990s to reclaim power in the 1999 state election.
PR handed a memorandum demanding the emergency sitting to be held within seven days to Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz today, who received the demand on behalf of the prime minister.
The minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said he would hand over the letter to Datuk Seri Najib Razak when breaking fast today and “after discussing with him, maybe we can respond.”
The minister in charge of Parliament said that there was no problem for Parliament to meet during the fasting month as that had been the practice in the early 2000s, when Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was prime minister.
Although Nazri refused to comment on PR’s claims, he said that complaints over fraudulent voters should be brought to the Election Commission to be investigated.
“I don’t think it can happen. To vote, you need a blue identity card,” he said, referring to the document that proves citizenship.
PR had also claimed that 1,108 permanent residents in the Klang Valley were given the status of full citizens on August 2 alone, and ridiculed the notion that over 1,000 identity cards were issued within a day.
PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub also showed documents claiming that between 1.06pm and 2.30pm on August 2, three voters had their status changed from permanent residents to citizens “in the blink of an eye.”
“This was information downloaded from the NRD website itself and we have a total of 1,597 cases across the country,” the Kubang Kerian MP had said.
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