Sudden appearances of ballot boxes at the eleventh hour.
Some Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidates lost in GE14 because of cases of fraud and manipulation, according to Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
The Prime Minister said that the party received reports that there were sudden appearances of ballot boxes at the eleventh hour, causing the Pakatan candidates to lose.
“There were also up to 700 or 800 cases of spoilt ballots. Don’t tell me Malaysians are that stupid,” said Mahathir.
He was speaking at a press conference after the Pribumi supreme council meeting on Monday (May 28).
He said despite the cheating, PH managed to win the elections although many people, including the media, remained sceptical of such an outcome.
The Pakatan chairman added that the coalition will look into the cases and see if there were grounds before filing petitions in court.
He said PH is trying to determine how many seats were lost due to the alleged fraud.
Mahathir said he was glad that the transition of power was peaceful.
He said during the meeting they also discussed Umno members joining the party, and it was decided that they must first resign from Umno, become independent and state their stand on the PH government.
He added that only after that would a decision be made on whether to accept them.
“Previously very few people wanted to join Pribumi, but today we are in power and we are getting about 1,000 applications a day,” he said.
Mahathir said previously Pribumi’s main aim was to remove Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak from power.
He said the party must now decide what it wants to achieve and explain this new stand to the people.