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Voters’ registration exercise: Election Commission should be allowed free and intensive publicity opportunity on public television and radio facilitiesPress Statement by Kerk Kim Hock (Petaling Jaya, Wednesday): Election Commission (EC) Secretary, Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar was reported to say that since July, only 122,000 applications to register as new voters have been received by the Election Commission. He said the figure include those applications to change their addresses. He also said that 1.7 million qualified citizens have yet to register themselves.
Datuk Wan Ahmad expressed the EC’s fears that they would not be able to achieve their target of a total of 10 million voters when the nation’s 11th general elections are held.
While political parties and NGOs can play their role in getting young people to register themselves as voters, the primary responsibility rests with the EC.
The EC must endeavor to come up with new ideas which can raise the awareness of the youth towards their democratic responsibilities.
The EC should also contemplate carrying out long term democracy building programmes aimed at educating the public, especially the young, on their shared responsibility towards democracy.
On the voters registration exercise which has met with limited success, the government must play its role by allowing the EC to carry out an intensive publicity campaign through public television and radio facilities without any charge as these facilities are the most effective and quickest in sending such messages to the people.
I am most disturbed by the EC's statement that those who register as new voters or those old voters who change their addresses less than 3 months before the dissolution of the Parliament will lose their voting rights as the EC requires three months to do the necessary processing .
In this electronic era where computers are relied upon to do most , if not all the work, there is no reason why EC cannot shorten the time required.
No procedure should override or take away a registered voter’s right to vote in an election. As such, even if the EC is unable to process applications to change address less than 3 months before the Parliament is dissolved , the voters should be allowed to vote at their old constituencies instead of having their rights taken away.
What the EC should do is to treat all such “ late” applications to change their addresses as invalid and allow the voters to vote at their old constituencies.
I therefore urge the EC to retract its statement, failing which DAP MPs will make their objection in the March Parliament sittings. (5/2/2003) * Kerk Kim Hock, DAP Secretary General & MP for Kota Melaka |