Another witness, Akob Damsah @ Yakop, who headed the NRD Tamparuli office until Jan. 8, 1996 told the panel that he was also included in the mission because he was authorised to sign at the back of the plastic blue ICs.
Former Sabah National Registration Department (NRD) Record Division Unit Head Asli Sidup responded in the affirmative when asked if he knew whether the holders of the JPN receipts indeed had cast their votes in the 1994 State Election.
He said that during that election he was stationed at one polling centre in a State Constituency in Papar to monitor the holders of about 200 JPN receipts casting their vote and that the winner who later became CM (Datuk Osu Sukam) won by 64 votes.
He said he was not given any "incentive" for doing the job.
Asli was released from ISA detention in 1997. His involvement began in the early 1990s until the day he was detained. He was called up by Rauf (ex-Sabah NRD Direetor) who directed him as well as three others including Asli to go to the house of the then Political Secretary to the Prime Minister in Kuala Lumpur, Datuk Aziz Shamshuddin.
Upon arrival, he said there were briefed about the "special task" by the ex-Pol Sec who was with another person who he did not recognise to issue blue ICs to immigrants in Sabah.
"Our duty was to sign the ICs É as a member of the public service we were subjected to the directive of our superior even though we knew it was wrong. We had to follow instructions," said Akob.
Confirming Asli's testimony, Akob said that based on the briefing the action was to increase the number of votes in Sabah.
"After that we just did our job and put our signature on the IC.
I can't remember how many but I estimated that within one month it was about 40,000," he said.
He also admitted that they were "blindly signing the documents."
Asked if they were given any incentive for doing the work, Akob said, "we were given assurance verbally that we would be protected against any legal action." The "work" was completed by another group before the ICs were sent to Petaling Jaya for the lamination process, he said.
To his knowledge, after processing of the ICs was completed they were taken back to Sabah and distributed to their supposed owners.
Asked if he knew if the applicants were authentic or not, he said he did not know because he never saw the application forms.
Most of the IC recipients were from the Philippines and Indonesia, he said, adding that he knew for a fact that they were eligible to vote.
"I was posted to various areas there the ICs were given out É we followed up to ensure the IC recipients are there and finally cast their votes," he said.
Sources: Daily Express
0 comments:
Post a Comment