EC plans to handle army votes

Government signals interest in Election Commission's proposal to collect votes from army camps.

PETALING JAYA: Military postal votes may soon be a thing of the past. Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said that there were talks with the government over letting EC officials collect ballot papers from army camps during elections.

“We already got a signal from the government,” Wan Ahmad said at a Bersih 2.0 (Coalition for Free and Fair Elections) forum at the Petaling Jaya City Council office.

“We hope that the EC will be able do this in the next general election,” he said, adding that the government’s reaction to this idea was “positive”.

He added that it was going to engage in discussions with the Defence Ministry over the matter. However, Wan Ahmad said that the EC would still have to collect the votes from army camps.
He said that the Armed Forces Council had dictated that military personnel had to remain in their camps, even when they were not on active duty.

Wan Ahmad said that this move was very different from how the military handled voting in the past. “They (the officers) have been doing this job for the past 50 years,” he said.

“The EC will appoint someone to collect ballot papers from the army camps,” Wan Ahmad said.
He said this in response to a question posed by Bersih 2.0 chief Ambiga Sreenevasan, who voiced concerns over military spouses being included under postal votes.

However, Wan Ahmad said that soldiers’ wives were given a choice when it came to postal voting.
“The spouses of military personnel are not postal voters. They are given a choice whether they want to be postal voters or not,” he said.

“The same thing goes for wives of the police. They are given the choice to be ordinary voters.”

Intimidation by the government

Wan Ahmad said that there were more than 134,000 military personnel and spouses registered on the EC’s electoral rolls.

When asked why, he said that some military wives did not want to cast their votes in the camps.

Wan Ahmad also said that there were some discrepancies in the electoral roll when it came to military spouses.

Acting on a report in Kedah, he said that a group of women found out that they were included as postal voters.

Wan Ahmad said that these women may have been registered as postal voters by their husbands without them knowing about it.

Ambiga also voiced concerns over the Territorial Army (Wataniah) moving into each of the 222 parliamentary constituencies. She the move amounted to an act of intimidation by the government.

Fewer than 100 civil society activists and members of the public attended the forum. - FMT