Despite court defeat, Bersih to continue push for voter roll clean-up

Ambiga says Bersih has no locus standi to take the EC to court over discrepancies in the electoral rolls.KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — Bersih 2.0 said today it will continue its clean polls push through publicity campaigns even after a Pakatan Rakyat (PR) MP’s recent court defeat appeared to pull the plug on efforts to compel an electoral roll clean-up.

Co-chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan admitted that the group could not do much else otherwise, having no locus standi to haul the Election Commission (EC) to court for alleged discrepancies in the voter rolls.

“Only the MP of that constituency has that locus standi to pursue (legally),” she told reporters at a press conference here.

“It would be more difficult for us to do that (legally act on the EC) so it would be better for the MPs or the candidates-to-be to pursue it,” she added.

Ambiga was responding to questions on Bersih 2.0’s response to Klang MP Charles Santiago’s failed attempt to compel the EC to clean up the Selangor electoral roll.

On March 14, the DAP lawmaker lost his bid to review a controversial electoral roll ahead of key national polls after the High Court ruled it had no power to allow the challenge.

Shah Alam High Court judge Vernon Ong said the court was unable to order a review of electoral roll once the EC had it gazetted as it was bound by section 9A of the Elections Act 1958, Santiago’s lawyer John Fam told The Malaysian Insider.

But despite the defeat, Ambiga said Bersih 2.0 would continue what it has been doing for four years now — piling pressure on the EC to clean up the voter roll and educating the public on the alleged widespread fraudulence in the country’s election system. Previously, Ambiga had said that the Selangor government must continue to publicise its findings on alleged discrepancies in the state’s voters list even after the EC snubbed the PR administration’s plea for a joint solution to the problem.

“They have to continue publicising this ... Maybe they can go to court to compel the EC to act. They should also lodge a police report,” she said.

When commenting on his failed bid recently, Santiago said the courts had effectively legalised the existence of “phantom voters” in the voter registry despite being presented with information to indicate discrepancies.

Some of the grounds raised in Santiago’s case had included the registration of over 60 voters in a single house, when the house owner had signed a statutory declaration saying that he had never given anyone permission to use his house address when registering with the EC, Fam said.

Santiago failed in his court attempt to compel the EC to clean up the Selangor electoral roll.The court ruling has also left other PR lawmakers with little option.

Previously, several including Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad said they would wait for the result of Santiago’s “test case” before following suit.

“Actually the only option left to us is to bring to court,” the PAS MP had said, although he agreed that the chances might be slim.

The DAP’s Teresa Kok agreed with Khalid, saying that she will be asking her supporters to mobilise genuine voters to come out on polling day.

She suggested that voters help out during the campaigning period, and to volunteer as polling and counting agents to monitor any possible wrongdoings.

“We can’t do much, because all of [the unidentified voters] are in the gazetted electoral roll,” the Kinrara assemblyman conceded, saying that she was getting the list of unidentified voters checked in her own state constituency.

“At our level, we have prepared our people, they are given a list of those names that can’t be located,” PKR’s Zuraida Kamaruddin told The Malaysian Insider.

“So if there are these people turning up to vote, we will have to do some initiative on our own to do some verification,” the Ampang MP said, detailing three stages of verification that she will implement.

Ambiga echoed the view, saying Bersih would also continue to pile pressure on Putrajaya through its own campaigns, including initiatives like deploying its own observers to spot electoral fraud during the polls process.

Opposition researchers claimed there are tens of thousands of phantom voters registered on the lists including for Sabah and Selangor, two key states capable of tilting the outcome of Election 2013.

The EC has denied the allegations, arguing that the high percentage of discrepancies in the voter roll was “normal”.

Rights group and PR leaders have accused the commission as being bias and have called for its reform. The suggestion was not included in the 22-point recommendation made by the Parliamentary Select Committee on polls reform.