Monday April 2, 2007
4.9mil yet to register as voters
KUALA LUMPUR: There are 4.9 million eligible Malaysians who have not registered as voters.
Election Commission (EC) deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said these people were denying themselves the right to elect their leaders.
“Malaysians like to do things at the last minute – even for registering as voters. But they forget that there is a three-month period for their names to be validated into the electoral roll.
“When their names are not in the electoral roll in time for an election, they will blame the EC for not providing enough facilities and venues for them to register themselves.
“This happens every election,” he said during the launch of the nationwide campaign by the Malaysia National Sikh Movement (Gerak Sikh) to register voters.
Wan Ahmad said the EC had done everything to make it easy for people to register as voters, including establishing over 640 counters at post offices nationwide.
“They can walk in and register in 15 minutes. But while people don’t mind queuing up to buy stamps, they complain of having to queue up at the EC counters,” he said.
There are 10.3 million registered Malaysian voters.
As at December 2006, Selangor had the highest number of eligible people yet to register as voters, followed by Sarawak (450,000), Johor (400,000) and Perak (375,000).
Seventy per cent of these people are between the ages of 21 and 35.
Wan Ahmad said the campaign by GerakSikh was the first time a non-governmental organisation was working with the EC to mobilise people to register as voters.
Under the campaign, GerakSikh would organise the registration of voters at various venues, with the EC providing mobile units.
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