Sabah RCI: 'Mustapha responsible for altering Sabah's demography'

Former Sabah chief minister Mustapha Harun was the man who started the idea of altering Sabah’s electoral demography in a bid to topple the PBS-led state government, the royal commission of inquiry (RCI) on immigrants heard today.

Mat Swadi Awi testified at the Kota Kinabalu Court Complex this afternoon that the late Mustapha had tasked him with distributing new voters in constituencies where Usno was weak to strengthen the party.

“My job was to increase the number of Muslim votes in constituencies where Usno was weak.

“Not all of them were immigrants, some were voters from the military, police or teachers from peninsula Malaysia,” said Swadi who was then working at Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Berhad in Sabah.

Usno had ruled Sabah from 1967 until 1975 before being ousted by breakaway party Berjaya, which was in power until 1985.

However, PBS, perceived to be a non-Muslim-majority party, came to power in 1985, to the chagrin of both Berjaya and Usno.

“Mustapha complained that Berjaya and Usno were divided (among Muslim voters), so to increase the vote for Usno is to ‘nationalise’ these immigrants,” said Swadi.

Swadi said in 1987, Mustapha told him of his plans and had conveyed this to then-home minister Megat Junid Megat Ayub (left), who then received approval from then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

However, Swadi conceded that this was only Mustapha’s words and he had no proof that Megat Junid had actually received approval from Mahathir.

Throughout the operation until 1990, Swadi said he was in contact with Mustapha and Megat Junid.

Swadi explained that he was based in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur where he received some 20,000 photocopies of blue identity cards.

“I keyed this information into a database and analysed in which constituencies they should be distributed.

“After that, I would hand over this information to the Election Commission (EC) (for them to register as voters in said constituencies),” he said.

Pressed by conducting officer Jamil Aripin if he had proof that some of the blue identity cards were indeed of illegal immigrants, Swadi insisted that he could recognise them by the identity card number.

However, Swadi said he withdrew from the project when he found out that it had escalated to issuing the same identity card numbers to different people.

‘EC asking questions’

“One day I was called up by the then-EC secretary Abdul Rashid (Abdul Rahman), he showed me one identity card number (on the computer) and when he clicked it there were 20 names that came out.

“He clicked another and there were 10 names... he asked me to explain which one is the genuine one.

“I was taken by surprise, I couldn’t answer, it was in a mess and I said if this is the case I will stop it,” he said.

Swadi later informed Mustapha that he wanted out and left the project in 1990.

The banker had earlier claimed himself to be the person behind the “grand-design” of ‘Project IC’.

However, Jamil corrected Swadi, stating that Project IC specifically refers to the illegal granting of blue identity card to foreigners.

Swadi then concurred that he was not involved in the granting of blue identity card but merely on the distribution of new voters to selective constituencies for Usno.

Usno later merged with Berjaya in 1990 to form modern-day Sabah Umno, before wresting power from a weakened PBS in 1994 through defections.