Sunday June 1, 2008

Shedding the old

By HARIATI AZIZAN and G. MANIMARAN

The Election Commission is seeking to re-register voters in a move to clean up the electoral roll. But the big question remains: Will the new roll be free of the problems that dog the current one?

A WEEK before polling day, Ahmad decided to check for his name in the election register. To his surprise, he found 24 other names registered in his family home.

Kuala-Lumpur-born Mei Lee, a 30-year-old businesswoman based in Hong Kong, has never registered to vote but discovered her name in the electoral roll for Terengganu.

Necessary update?: The electoral roll currently contains the names of 10.9 million voters. Some five million Malaysians who are eligible to vote are still not registered. — Filepic

True or not, tales like these of anomalies in the electoral roll inevitably surface every election, and the recent March 8 polls was no different.

Between 2004 and March 2008, the Election Commission received 235 complaints concerning the names of voters missing from the list.

At the same time, it was reported that there were almost 9,000 voters over the age of 100 and countless other names of the deceased in the electoral roll. In George Town, Penang, a deserted army base was found to have 500 voters registered to it.

The Election Commission (EC) has consistently claimed that the electoral roll is clean, but political parties, including the Barisan Nasional coalition, as well as local election watchdogs have continually cried foul.

Thus, it was no surprise when EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman dubbed the electoral roll a “headache” and “thorn in my side”.

»We need a completely new electoral roll that will meet the current needs of the current country« TAN SRI ABDUL RASHID ABDUL RAHMAN

His recent proposal to clean up the electoral roll could not have been timelier. As he told The Star’s Malay news portal mStar Online in an interview last week: “We need a completely new electoral roll that will meet the current needs of the current country and be acceptable to all quarters.”

And the way to do this, he mooted, is a massive registration drive of Malaysians who are eligible to vote, including those who are already registered as voters.

First established in 1958, the electoral roll currently contains the names of 10.9 million voters. Some five million Malaysians who are eligible to vote are still not registered.

Viable exercise?

Over the last five decades, the EC has undertaken periodical exercises to update the roll, but it has been hampered by red tape and legal constraints.

For example, although the EC maintains that it employs a comprehensive process in expunging “invalid” names from the electoral roll, it has also argued that it is not responsible for the existence of names of deceased voters in the roll.

As EC secretary Kamaruzaman Mohd Noor explained when the issue was brought up in the last polls, the EC relies on data from the National Registration Department (NRD) when cleaning out (names of) dead voters. “It is not our job to get death certificates.”

As for drawing up a completely new electoral roll, the EC would require amendments to the existing election laws or the drafting of new ones.

“We have jurisdiction to only examine and update the current list and not to come up with a fresh list,” explained Abdul Rashid. “It will depend on whether the Government will approve it or if a study needs to be carried out.”

Abdul Rashid said the entire process of preparing the bill and new registration exercise would take up to two years.

The entire process will include registration, exhibition of the new roll, investigation into any objections, re-exhibition and the preparation of the new master list.

When asked about how the re-registration would be conducted, Abdul Rashid said the matter would be discussed when the Commission’s panel members meet on June 9. He added that they would also need to discuss the matter at length with the political parties.

But what might come as a surprise to some is that the EC had proposed a similar re-registration exercise in 1995, when Abdul Rashid was then the EC secretary.

Even then, Abdul Rashid had said the Commission was seeking the changes to cater to the current needs of the nation and in response to the growing criticisms against the electoral roll, including duplication of voters’ particulars, names of deceased appearing on the roll, and “phantom voters” or those not residing in places where they were registered.

It was opined that a fresh registration would overcome such problems.

The 1995 proposal entailed Commission staff going house-to- house to conduct the registration all year round, just like in the national census.

A special committee in the Prime Minister’s Department studied the re-registration proposal, which was well received by both the ruling and opposition parties. However, the exercise was not pursued due to various constraints.

Better alternative

This time around, all agree that having a clean electoral roll is long overdue. However, many are not convinced that a re-registration exercise is the most efficient option.

As Bukit Bendera MP and Coalition for Clean and Fair Election (Bersih) member Liew Chin Tong remarked, “It is, of course, comforting that the EC has finally come to realise that the current roll lacks integrity and fails to ensure a clean, free and fair election. However, Rashid’s solution is worrying.”

Perhaps Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Shahrir Samad aptly pinpointed the main concern when he said: “Spend more money?”

The EC, however, declined to comment on the cost factor of the exercise.

National Institute for Electoral Integrity (NIEI) executive director Amin Iskandar believes that a re-registration exercise would alienate the aged and those from rural areas who have already registered.

“It will be a burden for some to go out and re-register, so they will just forgo the chance,” said Amin, who proposed an automatic voter registration system based on the National Registration Department’s database as the better alternative.

The NRD database has been linked to the EC since 2002, so it should not pose too many problems for the Commission, he said.

Bersih steering committee member R. Sivarasa concurred, saying: “Having a re-registration would create a new set of problems. Rather than a re-registration process, which might deprive more voters from exercising their rights, we should pursue an automatic registration. The advantage is that it would enfranchise the five million over people who did not register to vote.”

Even Malaysians for Free Elections (Mafrel), which has been calling for a re-registration of voters for many years now, has cautioned the EC about the feasibility of the re-registration exercise.

“Can we stop the illegal voters from re-registering or double registering? What about those in Sabah with ICs whose status we are not sure of? We have found out that it is not that easy to verify if a voter is illegal or non-existent, so the EC needs to draft the re-registration process carefully to ensure that it is really fraud-proof,” said Mafrel acting chairman Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh.

The main concern is whether it will be enough to make elections fairer, he added. “Re-registration can address the serious contamination issue in terms of the irregularities in the roll, such as multiple registration of voters, but that alone is not enough. It is only one very basic aspect of the election process and we need to look at the other practices too.”

He said the whole electoral process needed an overhaul, including postal voting.

“The postal voting we practise for police and military personnel is currently open to incidents of double registration and other abuses,” he said.

Syed Ibrahim felt that the EC should collaborate closely with all government agencies and election watchdogs.

“The EC needs to work more closely with government agencies such as the NRD, local authorities, police and even IRB (Inland Revenue Board) to keep their roll constantly updated even after the re-registration, if we have it. They should also make the roll accessible to election watchdogs who can help by going down on the ground to verify if the registered voters are real. Mafrel, for one, is open to working with the EC on this,” he said.

With a closer network, the EC would be able to update its databank faster, Syed Ibrahim added. For example, if a person dies, his name should be deleted from the roll automatically with instant notification from the NRD and police, he explained.

“Currently, it is only one way. The EC will have to wait for confirmation from the family.”

Malaysians, too, need to take responsibility to ensure that their details are updated, said Syed Ibrahim.

“This is where voter education comes in. The EC needs to do more to educate voters as currently there are no real programmes for voter education.”

More importantly, stressed Amin, the EC has to be independent and transparent.

“It needs to win the people’s confidence back. If they remain as an arm of the Prime Minister’s Department, people will not be confident about the validity of the re-registration exercise.”

News Poll

Latest Jobs from Star-Jobs

Latest from StarProperty