KUALA LUMPUR, 6 Mar — A former UMNO member said she and her team have assisted in the process of issuing blue identity cards (ICs) to Filipino and Indonesian immigrants in Sabah in the early 1990s.

Siti Aminah Mahmud said the instant issuing of the ICs, numbering up to 500,000 in total, was done under the clandestine ‘Project IC’ from 1990 to 1994, with orders given by the then Sabah UMNO Chief, the late Datu Mustapha Harun.

This comes in the wake of other startling revelations in the currently ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry into the illegals problem in Sabah.

Voluntarily working at Sabah UMNO building in Kota Kinabalu at the time, Siti Aminah said she was given a directive to assist in UMNO campaign in Sabah, to increase the number of ‘Malay votes’, to scout for residents in Sabah-Indonesia border without ICs, and to ensure the fall of the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) government.

“We will go to an area with a ‘leader’ ready. Once we reach a particular area, there will be a list of people’s names, original or fake, already prepared,” Siti Aminah said.

We change their names to sound more “Muslim”

“Should there be any name that sounded not like a Muslim name, we will change it to one. We will then take their photos and fingerprints to be sent to the UMNO office,” she said.

Siti Aminah said the project was made possible by collaborating with Sabah National Registration Department (NRD), which has also instructed the IC recipients to vote for Barisan Nasional (BN) during elections.

An IC number would be issued to 20 or 30 people, while same address would then used by a number of 20 people, she explained.

She added that, upon any delivery of newly issued blue ICs — produced in bulks and took a month of processing — the respective ‘leaders’ of a certain area would be told to instruct the recipients of the ICs to vote for BN.

Now a PKR member, Siti Aminah said she was detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) from 1995 to 1997 for allegedly involved in fraudulent handling of ICs and NRD documents.

The 62-year-old spoke at a press conference held at the PKR headquarters in Petaling Jaya on 28 February, accompanied by PKR’s Zuraida Kamaruddin, Latheefa Koya and Dayangku Intan.

Based on a 2010 census, more than 25 percent of Sabah’s population are made up of foreigners, reaching nearly a million out of the 3.2 million-strong population in Sabah. — The Rocket