Fact-Check: PAS President Claims 98% Of Non-Muslims Mobilised To Vote For DAP In GE15

Abdul Hadi Awang alleged that the intention of non-Muslims was to gain control of the country.

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PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang today claimed that 98% of non-Muslim Malaysians, including those outside the country, were mobilized to vote in support of DAP in the recent 15th General Election (GE15).

In an open letter to Muslims who did not vote in GE15, Abdul Hadi alleged that the intention of non-Muslims in doing so was to gain control of the country, and he used this claim to support an argument of why the Muslims who did not vote had committed a sin.

SURAT TERBUKA KEPADA JEMAAH HAJI DAN UMRAH YANG TIDAK MENGUNDI

Kira-kira 98 peratus orang bukan Islam dari seluruh negara dan pelosok dunia yang jauh dikerah untuk mara mengundi bagi mendapatkan kuasa dalam tanah air kita ini dengan menyokong DAP dan kumpulannya pic.twitter.com/JnWDxC7FJN
— Abdul Hadi Awang (@abdulhadiawang) December 20, 2022

In around 8 hours, his post had garnered 263 retweets, 2,551 quote tweets, and 499 likes on Twitter, as well as 3,700 reactions, 771 comments, and 796 shares on Facebook.

Just the facts

Statistics

According to Statistica, 63.5% of Malaysia identifies as Muslims, leaving 36.5% as non-Muslims.

There were 21,173,638 registered voters in GE15 and of those, 73.3% or 15,521,736 had cast their ballot.

DAP contested as part of the Pakatan Harapan coalition which secured 37.5%, or 5,820,651, of the ballots cast.

Laws

Section 5 of the Election Offences Act 1954 (2016 Revision) states that it is an offense for any person involved in the election process to try and identify how any individual will vote or has voted.

Analysis

The actual number of non-Muslim voters is not available as the Election Commission does not provide a record of the voters’ religion, though political parties do have access to voter information and could investigate each voter’s beliefs if they were so inclined.

A sample of the Electoral Roll from the Election Commission shows no reference to religion.

Even if that information was available, it would still be illegal and realistically impossible to determine how individual non-Muslims voted as that information is protected by the Election Offences Act.

However, assuming Abdul Hadi’s claim that 98% of non-Malaysian voters were mobilized to vote for DAP, was instead based on an analysis of statistics, we can compare the number of registered voters to the percentage of non-Muslims in the country, and estimate that 7,728,377 non-Muslims were eligible to vote in GE15.

According to Abdul Hadi, that would mean 7,572,509 non-Muslims had voted for DAP (or PH) which is 1,751,858 more than the votes PH/DAP actually received, assuming they did not receive any Muslim votes, not even from themselves.

As such it is highly likely that Abdul Hadi’s claim is false and he has further provided no source for his allegation in his letter or anywhere else that we have found as of press time.

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