p 12 – 13 - Selangor Times

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2 JUNE 8 —10, 2012
Back Selangor electoral cleanup
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EDITORIAL
CHIEF EDITOR KL Chan
PRODUCTION EDITOR C Gunasegaran
COMMUNITY EDITORS Neville Spykerman, Liu Wu Chiu
WRITERS Tang Hui Koon, Chong Loo Wah, Gan Pei Ling,
Basil Foo, Brenda Ch’ng, Alvin Yap, Gho Chee Yuan
COPY EDITOR James Ang
DESIGNERS Jimmy C. S. Lim, Chin Man Yen, Alan Wong
ADVERTISING Timothy Loh, Samantha Sim, Tony Kee,
Kenneth Koh, Adila Majid
ADVISORS Faekah Husin, Arfa’eza Abdul Aziz
By Gan Pei Ling and Basil Foo
SHAH ALAM: Election watchdogs
Bersih 2.0 and Tindak Malaysia are urging
the Election Commission (EC) to work
with Selangor in its inaugural voter verification
exercise, but the commission remains
non-committal.
“It’s a good initiative. Why’s the EC so
resistant?” asked Bersih 2.0 committee
member Maria Chin Abdullah.
She said every state government should
emulate Selangor and carry out door-todoor
checks to verify new electors’ identities
before the 13th general election to
ensure it will be clean and fair.
“If the EC can work with government
agencies (to register new voters), why
can’t it work with a state government?”
she asked.
Political scientist Dr Ong Kian Ming
had highlighted last Saturday in online
portal Malaysiakini that several federal
agencies have been actively registering
foreign-born citizens as voters in Selangor.
In addition, he revealed that 444 out
of 506 foreign-born citizens registered as
voters by these agencies did not have
house numbers and street addresses.
They were found to be primarily in the
Ampang, Gombak, Kelana Jaya and Serdang
parliamentary constituencies.
He added that Ampang, Gombak and
Kelana Jaya were marginal seats which
were won by Pakatan Rakyat, with less
than 60 per cent of the popular votes in
2008.
More dubious voters found
By Lee Choon Fai
Seri keMbAngAn: More
irregularities have been found in the
electoral roll of the Serdang parliamentary
constituency despite the
Election Commission’s (EC) reassurance
that the roll is clean.
Serdang member of Parliament
Teo Nie Ching yesterday said she
found 271 new voters in the electoral
roll provided by the EC, which
had incomplete address and who
were all registered in the first quarter
of this year.
“Some of these addresses have no
house numbers, no street names, no
post codes and some don’t even have
addresses at all.”
Teo said the lack of complete
addresses is highly suspicious and
made door-to-door voter verification
impossible.
She said that it was not a new
problem and she had raised the issue
at the EC’s briefing during the parliamentary
sessions in April.
“The EC said the voters were
people who registered themselves
before submitting a full address was
made mandatory, but now there are
new voters who do not have complete
addresses too,” said Teo.
She said if the EC’s explanation
was true, the number of voters without
complete addresses should be
decreasing instead of increasing.
According to Teo, currently 4.5
per cent of Serdang voters do not
have complete addresses and this is
an increase from the 4.3 per cent
from the last election.
She said voters without complete
addresses should not have been approved
in the first place, adding
applications submitted by her office
have been rejected due to incomplete
addresses.
“Although it is only a slight increase,
it is very suspicious and I
hope the EC can provide an explanation.”
She also highlighted an irregular
increase of voters in Serdang after
EC chairperson Tan Sri Abdul Aziz
Yusof had told the press on Tuesday that
the commission could not reject incomplete
voter addresses that have been verified
by the National Registration Department
(NRD).
But Ong said the move was worrying
and could just be the tip of the iceberg.
“Could there be a ‘Project IC’ happening
right now in Selangor - to give ICs to
the many non-citizens who are working
in the Klang Valley so that they can vote?”
he wrote in the Malaysiakini expose on
June 2.
Meanwhile, DAP national publicity
secretary Tony Pua pointed out that the
EC had in fact rejected incomplete voter
applications submitted by party workers,
contrary to Abdul Aziz’s claims that they
could not reject voters with incomplete
addresses.
To curb potential electoral fraud in the
upcoming elections, Selangor initiated a
statewide voter verification exercise on
April 19 and allocated RM5 million for
the Selangorku Bersih programme.
Village chiefs were tasked to go houseto-house
to verify the identity of some
400,000 new voters registered since 2008,
with Batang Kali selected as the first seat
to be checked.
Another seven constituencies –Pandamaran,
Port Klang, Selat Klang, Sri
Serdang, Kota Anggerik, Batu Tiga, Sri
Muda and Sri Andalas – have been selected
under phase two of the project.
Tindak Malaysia chief Wong Piang
Yow said the EC should welcome Selangor’s
pioneering initiative with “open
arms” instead of trying to sabotage it.
Selangor Umno deputy chief Datuk
Seri Noh Omar and the EC were reported
to have told the public to boycott
the campaign, claiming only the commission
had the authority to verify voters’
identities.
But when contacted, EC deputy chairperson
Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar
denied that the commission told the
public to snub Selangor’s voter verification
exercise.
“I never tell people not to cooperate.
It’s entirely up to the voters. I only said
the voters cannot be forced to show their
IC (identity card) to others,” he said over
the phone.
Wan Ahmad added that Selangor
never informed the commission about its
statewide verification exercise, which he
thinks is the first of its kind in the country.
“Usually such verifications are done by
political parties. We aren’t aware of it.
Selangor should approach the EC properly,
tell us what they are checking, how
they are doing it,” he said.
Menteri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim
said on Wednesday that the EC and Noh
should thank the state government for
initiating the campaign.
He said the campaign was only initiated
after the EC admitted they did not
have the capacity to conduct their own
voter verification exercise, which was last
done in 2006.
Teo (centre) pointing out the irregularities in the electoral roll in
Serdang. With her are Serdang DAPSY chief Duncan Lee (right) and
Seri Kembangan service centre chief Thong Kim Fatt.
the 2008 general election. A total
of 30,775 new voters have been
registered in Serdang which
amounts to an increase of 32.44 per
cent.
The average increase of voters in
the country is 16.3 per cent and the
average increase in Selangor is 21.4
per cent. She said the EC should
address these problems quickly and
provide an explanation to restore
public confidence in them.