Sarawak PKR in uproar after polls data chief stopped from flying out of Sibu, taken away
Sulok Tawie
Malay Mail11 November 2018
File picture shows a PKR member registering at the polling centre for Petra Jaya in Kuching November 10, 2018. — Bernama picMore
KUCHING, Nov 11 — PKR’s election committee systems and data chief Alvin Teoh was today taken away by Immigration officials just before he was to fly out of Sarawak, and his current whereabouts are now unknown.
The party’s Sarawak election coordinator Desmond Kho confirmed Teoh was stopped at the Immigration counter at the Sibu Airport this morning.
“He was on the way out to fly when he was stopped by Immigration,” Kho told Malay Mail, adding that he received information that Sibu police later took custody of Teoh but have since handed him to their counterparts in Sarikei.
He added that the state party leaders have engaged a lawyer to find out what is happening.
“We don’t know where Teo is now detained. I have asked a lawyer to meet the Sibu police to find out Teoh’s whereabouts,” Kho said.
Kho said Teoh could have been detained over a police report lodged by the party’s Batu Tiga assemblyman Rodziah Ismail over an alleged hack on the party’s tablets used in the electronic voting at Julau yesterday.
He said Teoh personally filed a report with the Sibu police accusing the Selangor lawmaker of making a false report.
According to Kho, two other police reports were also lodged over the alleged cyber-attack, including by a member of the central election committee in Julau.
Malay Mail is also trying to reach Julau MP Larry Sng to clarify on the detention of Teoh.
Sng is vying for the party chairmanship of the Julau branch and is reportedly in the camp supporting Rafizi Ramli who is challenging PKR deputy president Datuk Seri Azmin Ali for his post.
Teoh, who is the IT director of the central election committee, was in Julau to help conduct the internal elections there.
The division election was suspended yesterday over claims that hackers broke into the sytem and injected malware that erased the e-voting application in the tablets, steal data, change the passwords and control the use of the tablets.
The tablets were purported to have been remotely controlled.
A technical team later took the tablets offline before removing the application.
The central election committee chairman Datuk Rashid Din said the team had identified the “malware” as the Prey app.
However, Prey is a legitimate anti-theft application that is available on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS and even Linux.
The Julau branch caused controversy with the sudden spike its membership from 603 to 13,178.
Sarawak PKR information chief Vernon Kedit had claimed that the registration of 13,178 new members of the party in Julau was “not genuine, but made by stealing personal data and information without the knowledge of the owners and, therefore, not proper”
