The Federal Government and the Election Commission (EC) must take more pro-active steps to introduce all necessary electoral reforms before the upcoming General Election including absentee voting for Sabahans and Sarawakians living in areas outside the 2 regions.
This is something i have been fighting for since the beginning as it is the responsibility of the EC to help facilitate more to be part of the voting process including making it easier for people to exercise their democratic right to vote no matter where they were in the country.
This includes helping our young voters under Undi18 who could be studying in colleges or universities outside their state, and may not have the finances to fly back home just to vote. That is why all them should be gazetted as postal voters or set up special voting stations in the main cities in Peninsular Malaysia.
While i welcome the recent statement by the Law minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar in Parliament in response to my question that they are studying ways to allow absentee voting or even postal votes for those staying outside their States, however this “study” has been going on for too long without any tangible recommendations and a clear timeline.
The fact of matter when I raise an emergency motion in Parliament end of last year to compel the government to allow Sarawakians living outside to vote in the Sarawak General Election, the Deputy Minister gave a different answer and said the government has no plans to implement such reform but instead encourage them to change their voting area to the place they are currently staying for their convenience.
This is something I strongly disagree with as people should be given the choice to choose where they want to vote especially their own home state.
That is why I am disappointed that there seems to be mix messages by the government and more importantly disappointing that the government continues to be reluctance to take the necessary actions to make such reforms.
That is why i strongly urge the Speaker in Parliament to form a special ParliamentarySelect Committee(PSC) on Elections and compel the EC to report to them to discuss all the necessary reforms needed in view of the upcoming General Elections. Such PSC can determine all the necessary reforms, set a clear timeline , compel EC to implement it and form a monitoring system for its implementation.
All these reforms must be prioritised before even calling for an elections. Rather than focus on when the elections will be it, we should rather focus on making it safer, fairer and easier for more voters to be part of the electoral process.
If the EC continues to be reluctant to do such reforms, they will continue to fail our people and fail the democracy as a whole.