KOTA KINABALU, Aug 24- There was a discrepancy between the vote tally in Form 14 and the final gazetted results, Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s (PKR) candidate for the Kota Marudu parliamentary seat in the 13th General Election (GE13) Datuk Maijol Mahap told the Election Court here yesterday.
Form 14 is used to record the total number of votes obtained by each candidate and number of spoilt votes.
“I believe and state that this gross discrepancy was caused, at least in part, by the non-delivery of the requisite Form 14.
“Therefore, the non-delivery of the said Form 14, in my opinion, has either already affected the result of the election or could have had the potential to do so,” he said.
Mahap explained that at 12 polling centres, there was a discrepancy between the unaccounted or unreturned ballot papers that appeared on the Form 14 and the gazetted results.
He claimed there were 1,476 unreturned or unaccounted ballot papers, but the gazetted results showed that there were only 48.
He said the whole election process at the Kota Marudu constituency lacked transparency and accountability due to the presiding officers’ failure to deliver the requested copies of Form 14 to his election agent.
“This, in turn, casts the shadow of irregularity and doubt over the whole process and I say that the results could have been different if the rules were followed,” he said.
In the petition, Mahap had named Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Dr Maximus Ongkili, who won the seat for the Barisan Nasional (BN), as the first respondent and Returning Officer Lovita Koisun and the Election Commission (EC) as the second and third respondents respectively.
On Aug 13, Judge Datuk Yew Jen Kee had ruled that allegations of corruption against Ongkili pertaining to the contest be dropped from the petition but maintained Ongkili as the first respondent by virtue of him being the winner.
In his petition, Mahap had claimed that copies of Form 14 were not given to PKR’s polling agents.
Ongkili won by a majority of 842 votes after garnering 15,168 votes in a four-cornered fight. Mahap obtained 14,326 votes, Star candidate Majamis Timbong (2,228 votes) while Yuntau alias Kuntau Kolod (SAPP) only managed 444 votes.
– BERNAMA
