NGOs: EC must not disenfranchise Sarawakians in peninsula, Sabah

A coalition of NGOs has urged the Election Commission (EC) to extend postal voting rights to Sarawakians residing in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah.

In a statement, the CSO Platform for Reform Sarawak Chapter lauded the EC for its decision to allow Sarawakians residing abroad to vote by post and hence the same must be extended to those in other parts of Malaysia.

“Regretfully and most mystifyingly, the EC has refused to extend any form of absentee voting to the many Sarawakians voters currently residing in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah.

“We estimate that there are about 250,000 Sarawakians who live and work in Peninsular Malaysia. This number rises when we include Sabah,” said the coalition.

In 2018, an estimated 1.22 million people were registered as voters in Sarawak. If the coalition’s estimate is accurate, then around a fifth of Sarawak’s voters reside in other parts of the country.

The coalition said the Covid-19 pandemic had made returning to vote prohibitive due to the cost of air travel as well as the dangers posed by the Covid-19 virus itself.

“By refusing to make any provision for this group of voters to vote from the state they are living in, the EC has failed to fulfil one of its primary obligations as an election management body which is to ensure credible levels of voter participation in an election.

“This will in turn undermine the authority of the election results, the representativeness of the Sarawak state assembly and the legitimacy of the next elected state government.

“The federal government’s new slogan, Keluarga Malaysia, will amount to being pure rhetoric if Sarawakian voters outside the state are deliberately disenfranchised simply because they are unable to return to Sarawak to vote and influence the political future of our state,” said the groups. - Mkini