Ambiga to EC: Set up voter roll panel now

Bersih will set up the committee on its own if the commission continues to play dumb

PETALING JAYA: Bersih 2.0 chief S Ambiga has questioned the Election Commission’s silence over a proposal to set up a committee to clean up the electoral roll.

EC Deputy Chairman Wan Ahmad Wan Omar promised to take the proposal to the commission two weeks ago, during a dialogue organised and hosted by Kumpulan Karangkraf.

“We haven’t heard anything since then,” Ambiga said. “Are they serious about this or not?”

At the July 26 dialogue, Ambiga proposed that the committee should have representatives from NGOs and all political parties.

She told FMT today that Bersih would set up the committee without the EC’s help if it continued to play dumb.

“We want to work with the EC,” she said. “But we want this committee to be set up immediately.”

She estimated that it would take three and a half months to clean up the electoral roll.

“We want to address problems of phantom voters, such as voter clones, people with the same addresses, dead voters and so on. This would probably need a revamp of the registration system and also the National Registration Department.

“On top of those, we also want to look at the biometric system versus indelible ink. And we must decide on immediate issues such as prolonging the campaign period and having international observers during elections.”

Ambiga said Bersih was concerned over recent allegations that the electoral roll included the names of non-citizens .

“There are a lot of things that are not right,” she said. “They may have perfectly good explanations, but they have to explain. They cannot say that it’s technical or not technical. It doesn’t answer the question.

“How could somebody with a permanent-resident status get onto the electoral roll in the first place?”

She also criticised the EC’s imposition of limits for the public to raise objections against the electoral roll. Under current EC regulations, the time limit is one week and each member of the public is limited to only 10 objections.