KOTA KINABALU: A Pakistani immigrant to Sabah said he was given a blue identification card (IC) and allowed to vote twice in Peninsular Malaysia, before the authority told him that the document belonged to someone else and had his Malaysian citizenship cancelled.
Abdul Latif Aziz Khan from Swat, a valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, said he came to Malaysia in 1983 via Kuala Lumpur using an international passport.
He stayed in Papar for three years conducting a house-to-house direct selling business involving toys and clothes but had to return to Kuala Lumpur to search for better jobs, after many of his customers here refused to pay their debts.
He stayed in peninsula for a while before deciding to come back to Sabah and stayed in Putatan, where someone approached him about applying for a Malaysian IC.
“Someone took me to get my fingerprint taken (for the IC application), after one month I got it (the IC),” he said, testifying as a witness for the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants here yesterday.
According to Latif, he also faced no difficulties when he applied to upgrade his IC, bearing the name of one Abdul Latif Jumaani, to the newer version of Bunga Raya.
He claimed that the National Registration Department gave him the new version, which was the latest of the Malaysian IC at the time, with not much questions.
However, he said the department did not issue him with a new one when he applied for a replacement after losing the document in 2002.
“I went to the NRD office in Bahau, where I was given a temporary receipt but they never give me the IC until now. I had to go and ask many times before they finally told me that my IC has been cancelled because it was also used by someone else,” he said, adding that this happened when he requested for extension of his expiring temporary receipt.
Using the IC, Latif testified that he was allowed to vote in the 1995 elections in Ampang.
He said he also used the IC to vote for a second time in Bahau, Negeri Sembilan, but he could not recall when that year was, saying he only remembered the election saw Tun Abdullah Badawi took office as the Prime Minister.
To a question from the Conducting Officer, Latif informed the Commission that his name was still in the electoral roll when he checked about a month ago.
Latif said a friend helped him check his voter status ahead of the recently concluded 2013 general election but he could not vote as he no longer had any documents to travel to Bahau, where he was registered as a voter.
The witness said the whole incident had caused him so much trouble, including being arrested by the police and put in a lock-up for days on many occasions but was released after he told them his story.
He said he was even brought to court on one occasion after the police caught him in Pasir Mas, Kelantan and charged him for entering Thailand without documents.
Latif also informed that he had gone to the Pakistan consulate to relate his plight after his document was taken back, but the officers told him there was nothing they could do for him and even called the police to handle him after he started yelling at them.
Meanwhile, the Conducting Officer told the Panel that information from the Home Ministry indicated the old Blue IC issued to Latif belonged to another person, a Bajau from Kampung Simunul Semporna. It was also noted that the other person had also applied for an IC using Statutory Certificate as supporting document, similar to Latif.
On-the-spot online inquiry during the hearing showed the old IC was still registered in the electoral roll, to a voter with the same name under the Tuaran constituency, but with a different MyKad number.
A check using the new MyKad number that was given to Latif however came back negative, with a result “information not found”.
The commission released Latif as a witness after deciding to look further into some of the facts he had given, before calling former state education director Datuk Dr Muhiddin Yusin as the next witness for the afternoon session.
The hearing will resume today.