Rafizi said he took leave to focus on party election issues, will defend deputy president post

PKR deputy president Rafizi Ramli (picture) today said he took leave from his ministerial duties last month to focus on resolving issues arising from the party’s ongoing elections.

However he said he will defend his deputy presidential post and welcomed any challengers to the role in the spirit of the party.

“I welcome the news that Datuk Seri Saifuddin (Nasution Ismail) and Sister Nurul Izzah Anwar have shown interest in contesting for the position of Deputy President of the party.

“From the very beginning, I stated that the right to contest is their right and we should celebrate it in the spirit of democracy.

“Therefore, I welcome the competition for the position of Deputy President of KEADILAN in this election and will join other candidates in using this election stage to strengthen the party.

“It is a win-win decision for me,” he said in his statement today.

Rafizi said he applied for and was granted leave by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who is also the PKR president from April 29 to May 5.

He said he also held a four-point meeting with Anwar and Saifudin during his leave where it is said he is prepared not to contest for the No 2 party post as well as not joining the cabinet to focus on the grassroot campaign.

“In the meeting with Datuk Seri Anwar, I expressed the view that the campaign strategy towards the 16th General Election (GE16) needs to be streamlined taking into account the current situation of the people,” he added.

Rafizi added that he needed to take action as over 90 objections were officially lodged including complaints where people on the same “camps” had very different results in the same division election.

He said he held a series of meetings and presented key concerns to the party’s central leadership council during that time.

“The council subsequently agreed to conduct an independent audit of PKR’s digital voting system to ensure that it was free from interference and technical flaws.

“The findings of this audit, along with input from technical representatives appointed by candidates, provide an important context for the issues that surfaced.”

Rafizi added that the separation of party and ministerial duties was a culture that should be encouraged.

In his statement today he also included two appendices which detailed the report of the party election.

The first one is a 68 page report titled “Digital Audit and Forensic Report on the E-Voting System of Parti Keadilan Rakyat” which presents the findings of a comprehensive digital audit and forensic investigation conducted on the e-voting system used by PKR for their recent party elections held between April 11th and 20th, 2025.

The report said Rafizi was tabled for the PKR central leadership on April 29 which concluded the e-voting system successfully fulfilled its core purpose of securely and transparently recording and counting votes.

It is – the report said – despite some areas for improvement in user-facing elements and internal consistency, the system demonstrated resilience and integrity.

“Recommendations include enhancing user interface testing and message clarity, aligning qualification logic across all systems, standardizing time zone handling, and explicitly controlling candidate display order to prevent future confusion and improve user experience,” said the report.

The second appendix is titled “Independent Technical Review: Post-Audit Discrepancy Report” prepared for, M Anbarasan Murugesu — Puchong’s PKR member which is a post audit technical review of the first report.

The review revealed a number of significant discrepancies and omissions in the execution and reporting of the official audit.

“Several high-priority items within the original audit checklist such as end-to-end process validation, source code review, server deployment log analysis, database integrity checks, and vote data reconciliation were either only partially executed or entirely omitted.

“Additionally, the audit failed to provide supporting evidence for critical system behaviors, such as crash analytics, sampling methods, and user acceptance testing outcomes. These shortcomings raise substantial concerns over the reliability and completeness of the audit’s findings,” said the review. — TMR