A rigged electoral rolls do not present a fair fight and he must not assume that the rakyat will remain stupid forever.
COMMENT
A case in point is the state seat of Pelabuhan Kelang currently held by Badrul Hisham Abdullah (ex-PKR, now Umno state assemblyman) which has seen an increase of 5,510 new voters between the end of 2010 and the 3rd quarter of 2011.
This state seat is located in the parliamentary seat of Klang currently held by DAP’s Charles Santiago and as there have been no new housing developments in that said area since the previous general election, this increase is suspicious indeed.
Santiago has checked the voter rolls and has seen Indonesian names in the rolls and he has heard that citizenships are being expedited for the foreign workers to enable them to vote. He is worried about this increase and will file objections on those names.
He will also try to fix a meeting with the Election Commission (EC) officials to seek an explanation on this mysterious increase. The cost of filing an objection is RM10 per name and will come to a hefty sum when there are a few thousand names.
The cost is prohibitive as the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) MPs do not have the federal allocation of RM1.5 million per year that by right should be disbursed to them as they are the federal opposition.
The Prime Minister’s Department is holding on to this money and denying the Pakatan MPs their rightful allocations. Thus Pakatan MPs are cash-strapped.
There are also more than 5,000 suspicious names in the parliament seat of Shah Alam (PAS’ Khalid Samad) and more than 5,000 in the parliament seat of Kuala Langat (PKR’s Abdullah Sani).
The same goes for the parliament seats of Hulu Langat (PAS’s Che Rosli) and Kota Raja (PAS’s Dr Siti Mariah). The situation is the most acute in Selangor, followed by Perak and then Penang.
In Perak, the state seat of Pangkor which belongs to Umno’s Menteri Besar, Zambry Abdul Kadir has seen an increase of 6,000 postal votes and in seats which BN has won marginally in 2008, the number of voters have increased a lot in order to cover the previous slim winning margins.
No guts to take on Anwar in a fair fight
In Sabah, there is the ‘Project IC’ and hundreds of thousands of foreigners have been given the Malaysian Identity Card and therefore will be eligible to vote.
The point here is that rigged electoral rolls will nullify the votes of genuine Malaysian voters and therefore the intention of the genuine voters are sabotaged and democracy is subverted when the polls are manipulated to prop up an unpopular regime.
It also points to the concrete fact that Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and BN lack the courage to engage in a fair fight with Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan.
This is because not only the EC but also the mainstream media and various national institutions which should remain neutral has been roped in to assist BN in maintaining their stranglehold on Putrajaya.
PM Najib must not think that the rakyat will remain stupid forever. The rakyat wants a fair fight and rigged electoral rolls do not present a fair fight. Taking for granted that the rakyat will remain forever stupid is the assumption of the rogue regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and hence their downfall.
It is time for Najib and BN to realise that free and fair elections are a must as he has always declared Malaysia to be a vibrant democracy.
Wanting to cling on to power at all cost will only make the rakyat hate them. Therefore it was really disturbing to hear that Najib has vowed to defend Putrajaya at all cost (broken bones, crushed bodies and all that).
As a prime minister he should vow to help the rakyat at all cost but instead he has vowed to cling on to power at all cost! This is the type of leader during the age of Barbarians (the Huns, the Mongols, the Tartars, etc), not a leader of a civilised nation.
How can Najib talk about moderation, justice and fairness when the voter rolls are still so dirty? His words are contradictory and his stand inconsistent, to put it diplomatically.
BN’s intention to win via dirty voter rolls and other shenanigans orchestrated by the relevant authorities just goes to show that Malaysia is getting increasingly backward while our neighbours forge ahead in democratic practices.
In general, all average and decent Malaysians want to watch a good and fair fight as in the case of Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty and Ip Man (the founder of Wing Chun martial arts) versus Japan’s General Miuro. But in the Malaysian general elections, there is no fair fight. Each victory by an Opposition MP is against all odds.
Time to put an end to the dirty games
BN elected representatives always trumpet loudly that they have regained the people’s support especially the support of the city Malays and the Indians who have lost their trust in Pakatan.
When the rural Malays together with the city Malays and the Indians support BN, what have BN to fear?
Besides dirty voter rolls, there is also blatant vote buying and this was practiced openly in Sarawak when cheques were given to longhouse chieftains in the 10th Sarawak state elections held in April last year. The matter came to light when one of the chieftains went to cash the cheque and it bounced and he complained about it!
In the Sibu by-election in May 2010, Najib threw the infamous ‘I help you and you help me’ line. The Sibu voters rejected his unethical proposal. The same happened in the Kerdau by-election in March 2011. Malaysians must always keep in mind these instances of outright vote-buying and reject such leaders.
Another instance of not fighting fairly is the garbage issue. This sabotage is currently happening in Petaling Jaya and Shah Alam wherein the garbage trucks were not allowed to enter some areas with the drivers being verbally threatened. This sabotage is done with the intention of putting the Pakatan Selangor state government in bad light.
Malaysians must also remember that Najib has rejected Anwar’s challenge to a debate on the Budget and economic issues. Let us see who has the better Budget – Pakatan or BN.
Instead, Najib dismissed Anwar’s challenge by saying that he has no time for such trivial matters such as a debate. It is certainly not trivial as the rakyat want to evaluate who is the more capable leader.
Not only does Najib lack the courage to fight fairly, he avoids the fight as well!
It is high time for Malaysians to vote in clean leaders with integrity and sound ethics who are willing to fight in a fair manner. It is time to put an end to the dirty games and the time to do it is in the coming 13th general election.
Selena Tay believes in Pakatan Rakyat will be better at governing the nation. She is an FMT columist.
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