All eyes on EC and how it handles GE15

 

Voters are anxiously awaiting the announcement of the date for polling now that Parliament has been dissolved. The general election has to be held within 60 days from Oct 10, the date Parliament was dissolved.

People will not merely be watching the Election Commission; they’ll be scrutinising its every move.

The EC is slated to meet on Oct 20 and the public will await the announcement regarding nomination and polling dates with bated breath. They will particularly be interested in knowing if polling will be on a weekend or a weekday, and they will be noting the number of days allotted to campaigning.

In the past, voters gauged how the EC would lean based on these two decisions. Short campaign periods, for instance, were and are still seen as favouring the ruling party.

Perhaps this may not apply to GE15 because the EC would want to hold polling before the rains peak and that means a possible shorter campaign period. But fixing a weekday for polling will be seen as favouring the ruling government and not caring about inconveniencing voters.

They will also be watching with an eagle eye how it conducts itself until after the election is over.

This is because the EC does not exactly have a good reputation, at least not all the ECs prior to 2018 when it was reconstituted following the victory of Pakatan Harapan in the 14th general election.

There have been simply too many complaints about the EC and the whole election process in the country over the years. Common complaints include names not on the electoral roll, the existence of phantom voters, and many voters suspiciously having the same address.

There have been complaints of Malaysians residing in foreign countries who did not return to vote being on record as having voted, of postal or military votes allegedly being moved here and there to buttress a particular ruling party candidate, and much more.

One of the worst complaints is that non-citizens had been allowed to vote or had been given identity cards on condition they vote for the ruling party.

Remember the 2013 Royal Commission of Inquiry into the illegal immigrant influx into Sabah? Foreigners gave evidence of getting ICs in exchange for voting the Barisan Nasional in the mid-1980s under what has come to be known as Project IC.

That explains why some foreign-looking Malaysians became the unfortunate victims of overzealous voters trying to “protect” the vote in the last general election.

The worst complaints though have been about electoral boundary delineations, which result in malapportionment and gerrymandering.

There’s nothing that can be done about electoral boundaries for now because, according to the Federal Constitution, the electoral boundary delineation exercise has to be done once every eight years.

The current eight-year redelineation exercise period for Peninsular Malaysia will end in 2026 and that for Sabah in 2025. However, Sarawak can have its exercise in 2024. Any correction has to be done then.

Some would remember that in 2014, a study by the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) based in the University of Sydney and Harvard University, concluded that the BN’s victory in the 13th General Election of 2013 was largely due to gerrymandering or the malapportionment of electoral boundaries.

“The experts’ perceptions suggest that the voting districts were not impartial and discriminated against some parties, since they strongly favour rural constituencies as opposed to urban ones,” Max Groemping, a researcher with the EIP team, told the media at that time.

“The size of constituencies is unequal, so that rural districts often represent fewer voters than urban ones. That means that it takes fewer rural voters to determine one seat. This is called ‘malapportionment’.”

Groemping said the BN stood to benefit from the way the electoral boundaries were drawn, adding that the BN gained almost 60% of parliamentary seats with only about 47% of the popular vote while Pakatan Rakyat took only 89, or 40%, of the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat in 2013, despite winning 50.87% of the popular vote in our first-past-the-post electoral system.

Some of us would not have forgotten how the EC’s credibility was torn apart by testimonies of voters at the People’s Tribunal on Electoral Fraud following the 2013 polls.

Some would also recall that in 2017, members of the public took the EC to court over alleged flagrant cheating through its boundary redelineation exercise. It was claimed that the EC had favoured the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition.

The EC was accused of making the malapportionment and gerrymandering in the electoral boundaries worse by creating more super-sized constituencies. According to Bersih, this was done in marginal constituencies in a deliberate and coordinated manner to influence electoral results.

Years ago, one ex-commissioner told me he was glad to be out of the EC after a term because he was unhappy with the “compromises” being made. He refused to elaborate.

In October 2018, the King, on the advice of the government of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, appointed a tribunal to investigate and recommend action against the commissioners if they had done wrong in carrying out their duties.

However, the commissioners resigned suddenly and the five retired Federal Court judges appointed to the panel – in a 3-2 majority decision – said as the six had resigned it would merely be an academic exercise. And so, no further action was taken.

But following the reconstitution of the EC a month earlier in Sept 2018, public confidence in the institution began growing again. Voters generally believe that the present commissioners have integrity and will not compromise or bend over backwards to please the ruling government, as some, or many, did in the past.

Many will recall former EC chairman Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman being quoted in the media as saying, in 2013, that in three redelineation exercises done during his time, the EC had ensured that the Malays would remain in power. However, he said, this was done in a “proper” manner and not “illegally”.

It is incumbent upon the EC to carry out its duties in an impartial manner. It should ensure that in GE15 all parties and individuals – including the caretaker government – follow election rules. They should, for instance, ensure that government resources and personnel are not misused.

Talking about the role of the EC, the Sultan of Perak, Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah, said it must remain neutral at all times. He likened the EC to a referee handling a competition among candidates and political parties during an election.

“The EC must maintain its impartiality and transparency whenever an election is conducted. It must remain an independent body free of executive or party influence to ensure a free and fair election,” the sultan said when launching the book, ‘Pilihan Raya Demokrasi Malaysia: Tanding, Pilih, Menang, Tadbir’ in March this year.

The EC has a tough task ahead: It has to carry out its work in such a manner that public confidence will return to a tarnished institution.

The commissioners should know that voters are watching, and watching closely. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.