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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

CHEATING BEGINS: EC has started helping Umno win GE14 - watchdog claims

CHEATING BEGINS: EC has started helping Umno win GE14 - watchdog claims
PETALING JAYA - Polls reform watchdog Bersih 2.0 alleged today that the Election Commission (EC) is helping to keep the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) in power at the next general elections due in 2018.
Among other things, Bersih 2.0 cited a discovery that government officers with positions in BN senior party, Umno, are permitted to register new voters despite the EC disallowing all political parties from doing so.
“While the EC has decided not to renew the terms of Assistant Registration Officers (AROs) from political parties, government agencies - in particular Jabatan Hal Ehwal Khas (Jasa) — have maintained their ARO status and it is clear this is a cover to allow BN parties, especially Umno, to continue their voter registration exercises, while denying other political parties the same right,” the group said in a statement.
The Department of Special Affairs (Jasa) falls under the Communication and Multimedia Ministry and is headed by Umno supreme council member and former deputy minister Datuk Puad Zarkashi.
The electoral reform group said it had managed to match 35 of the 52 AROs under Johor’s Jasa to their positions in BN or BN-linked groups such as Perkasa and Gerakan Belia 4B.
In a table provided to reporters, Bersih 2.0 listed the AROs who hold posts in various Umno divisions ranging from Youth Chief, Puteri Umno chief, secretary, deputy chief, as well as three MCA members.
It also cited the Malacca EC website’s listing of seven ARO for Umno and two for another BN party, the Indian Progressive Front.
Bersih 2.0 deputy chairman Sarajun Hoda Abdul Hassan claimed that the EC was being “irresponsible”, quizzing the polls regulator for allowing these AROs despite previously declaring that all political parties would no longer be allowed to have agents to register new voters.
“Their main job now is just to ensure Umno and BN stay in power by hook or by crook for eternity,” he said, later pointing to voter registration data as proof of a purported bid to “reengineer” seats to favour BN with easier wins.
Zoe Randhawa, the group’s advocacy and education officer, cited the spike in new Malay voters being registered when quizzing EC over its refusal to implement automatic voter registration.
“Why can they not use automatic registration to put all Malaysians who have reached voting age into the electoral roll? Is this why — so they can manipulate the electoral roll?” she asked, noting that the EC was already working with the National Registration Department to strike off dead voters and could easily work with it to find eligible voters.
Bersih 2.0 noted today that the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (Merap) found a significantly higher number of Malays among the newly registered voters in 13 marginal federal seats in Pahang, Perak, Selangor, Johor and Kuala Lumpur, claiming that non-Malays were being disenfranchised in these seats won with small margins.
Merap researcher Lee Wee Tak showed reporters statistics where Malays in Negri Sembilan for the first three-quarters of 2014 accounted for 72.8 per cent, 85 per cent, 89 per cent respectively of newly registered voters, against only 52.8 per cent of the total voters during the 2013 general election.
For Perak, 78.3 per cent of newly registered voters in the same 2014 period were Malays, up from 48.4 per cent of total voters during the 2013 polls, he said.
Both Bersih 2.0 and Merap said they did not intend to view the voter registration data through a racial lens, but were merely looking at what they said could be Umno’s calculated move and strategy to shore up support in polls.
In explaining how the drastic increase in newly registered Malay voters could be tied to Umno, Zoe said: “If you look at it from what Umno believes and their political ideology, they see things very much as their support base comes from Malays, BN believes there was a Chinese tsunami, that’s what they believe strongly.
“If you look at it from their point of view, how would they go about registering voters? If they see their support base as purely Malays, they are going to try to register more Malays,” she said.
Bersih 2.0 noted today that the registration of new voters is a key battleground for political parties, saying that roughly 2.6 million, or 20 per cent of those who voted in the 13th general election, had done so for the first time.
The group also said four million Malaysians are expected to be eligible to vote in the 14th general election due by 2018. - Malay Mail

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