Malaysiakini
The US embassy in Kuala Lumpur today shed more light on the fraud committed in an anti-Anwar petition on the White House website, explaining that over 60,000 signatories were in fact from disposable emails.
In a Facebook posting, the US embassy said it was these type of entries that were zapped from the petition signatory list and it was not done arbitrarily.
"There is an erroneous assumption that the fraudulent signatures removed from The White House petition titled 'Respecting the Sovereign Nation of Malaysia' were the first 60,789 signatures on the petition.
"The White House did remove 60,789 signatures deemed to be fraudulent because a vast majority of those signatures originated from slipry.net.
"Other fraudulent signatures originated from trashmail, sharklasers, and mallinator – all disposable email services," it said.
The US embassy added that the fraud occurred throughout the period of the petition.
Yesterday, the petition demanding the US not to interfere in the jailing of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, which had over 70,000 signatures, suddenly saw it being reduced to only around 12,000.
The petition, which was aggressively promoted by BN supporters on social media, was meant to counter another petition started by former US ambassador to Malaysia John Malott in support of Anwar.
Malott's petition had asked the US to make the release of Anwar as a top priority of the US government.
Anwar was on Feb 10 sentenced to five years in prison for sodomy, a charge he claims is politically motivated.
The petition, titled 'Make the release of Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim from prison a top priority for US policy toward Malaysia', was also aggressively promoted by Pakatan Rakyat supporters on social media.
This petition, too, was briefly removed for a fraud check but it was eventually cleared and restored. It has since hit over 113,000 signatures.
The White House petition platform allows netizens to collect signatures on particular issues and if it hits over 100,000 signatures within the stipulated time, it will be forwarded to the relevant US agencies which must respond to it.
Individuals interested in signing the petition must do so with a legitimate email.
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