Renew electoral roll every three years, says former EC chief

Abdul Rashid said the RM50 million would be a small sum to ensure the electoral roll reflects the latest status of the 13 million registered voters. – File pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 26 – Malaysia’s electoral roll should be renewed every three years after elections to dispel doubts over the process, former Election Commission (EC) Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman has proposed.

The EC now conducts year-round registration and gazettes the latest electoral rolls every three months but the major complaint was that it contains errors, including names of dead or unknown people.

“So, I propose this. It’s better we register three years after elections, we register again. But we need RM50 million,” he told Sinar Harian Online.

Abdul Rashid said the RM50 million would be a small sum to ensure the electoral roll reflects the latest status of the 13 million registered voters, pointing out that it was hard to keep track of voters who move around without changing their addresses in their identity cards.

“It’s peanuts only for this country, RM50 million a year, we are talking about billions. Like the census, we do it that way.

“That’s why I say, every three years after elections, so that this number, people who are not there, name is there but (they) are not there, will become minimum, the least.

“Even if they move, people still know them. The problem now is, they move, people don’t know them. Because (when) they move, the address in their identity cards, (is) the address of rented houses.

“Already gone through the hands of close to 50 people, how can people know? So, this is a problem,” he was quoted saying by the Malay-language news portal.

Abdul Rashid, who has served for 27 years with the EC, said that the people including political parties will continue to doubt if action is not taken.

“And political parties with little political capital, will use the issue of phantom voters as an issue to draw sympathy and tidak sedapnya (unpleasantly), they point fingers at SPR,” he said, referring to the EC’s initials in the Malay language.

The 13th general elections has to be called by next April when the Barisan Nasional (BN)’s mandate expires.

Electoral reform group Bersih and opposition politicians have long claimed that Malaysia’s electoral roll has numerous errors and dubious entries.

Last month, the Pakatan Rakyat-led Selangor highlighted a study that showed that the state was unable to trace as many as 134,675 of the 497,084 of its newly-registered voters for the fourth quarter of last year.

But the current EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof explained that the EC determined a person’s voter constituency based on the address stated in his or her identity card and not according to the voter’s most current residence.

He stressed that under the law, the EC cannot carry out arbitrary changes, but can only change a voting address if a voter makes the request.

Abdul Aziz said voters sometimes changed their addresses at the NRD but failed to inform the EC — which has led to criticism that the electoral rolls are not current.

One of the factors adding to the delay is that the NRD is not required by law to inform the EC of changes in a voter’s registration status.

Abdul Aziz also said that these voters could still vote as they are legally registered.

“Under the law, they are registered voters in Selangor and they are legal voters in Selangor, whether you want to call them phantom voters (or not), they are registered,” he told The Malaysian Insider last month.

In October, Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz told parliament that the EC will implement the recommendations of a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on electoral reforms in the coming elections.

Nazri said that six out of the 32 recommendations would not be implemented due to high costs involved.

“As far as we know, Dewan Rakyat has approved ten tuntutan (claims) on December last year and 22 more on April 2012.

“SPR has told us that all recommendations are and will be implemented.  From the 32, only six are not implemented because of laws and high costs,” the minister in the prime minister’s department said in reply to Tanjong MP Chow Kon Yeow.

But Nazri had said that this does not mean the EC will not implement the six recommendations in the future.