Barisan Nasional (BN) is one of the world's longest uninterruptedly
elected coalition of political parties ruling a country. It's rule over
Malaysia is now entering into the 6th decade.
The opposition parties and its leaders have long complained that BN has been practising unfair and illegal methods in most of the general election, to assure victory and consolidate their power. However it is only after 2008 that more light is being shed on the crooked ways that BN appears to be employing to win at all cost in the next general elections.
In more ways than one the race distance to the post for a BN victory appears to be getting shorter by the day at the expense of the opposition.
From the expert analysis of many political scientists and analysts like Wong Chin Huat and Ong Kian Ming as well as Electoral reform coalition BERSIH and civil society action group TINDAKMALAYSIA a clearer picture is beginning to unveil, the 13th GE is going to go down in Malaysia's history as the dirtiest elections ever.
The usual dirty tactics as always remains. BN being the ruling government is accused of controlling the mainstream media like the national television and radio broadcasts as well as the newspapers. Claims of the Federal money being utilised to fund their political campaigns, government machinery and facilities being abused, civil servants being bullied to assist are serial complaints from the opposition.
What is even more alarming is the revealing of elaborate methods being employed to dilute the power of the legitimate voters in this country.
Firstly are the outright rigging methods which include vote buying, ballot stuffing and counting/tabulation frauds.
Second is the rigging through the electoral roll. This is done by 3 methods:
a) Inclusion of non voters : Phantom voters. This includes dead people voting, non resident voters, non existent voters (cloning) and foreigners being given citizenship/MyKads.
b) Exclusion of legitimate voters who are omitted directly from the electoral roll.
c) Redelineation of constituencies: by altering the size and boundary of the electorate, one can affect the power of the ballot. Recently the EC had been doing this under the term 'border correction exercise'.
The number of registered voters who number more than 50,sharing a same address is 1262.
The number of new voters who have been 'registering' since BN lost its 2/3 majority in the last GE is nothing short but spectacular.
2008: 130,000
2009: 278,621
2010: 851,210
2011: 1,133,707
As of 31/12/2011 12,595,268 Malaysians have registered as qualified voters.
This sudden feverish spurt of 'voter register enlightenment' appears to show Selangor as its epicentre. Selangor registered 340k new voters since the last GE which is a 21.8% increase as compared to the national average of 16.3% increase in voter registration. Ong Kian Ming highlights that history appears to be repeating itself as the two states Sabah (after the 1990 elections) and Trengganu (after the 1999 elections) saw a sudden increase in the number of voters in the electoral roll after BN lost. Subsequently in the following GE respectively, miraculously BN came back to power in spectacular fashion.
The total number of registered voters in the previous GE's:
1995: 9,012,370
1999: 9,694,156
2004: 9,756,097
2008: 10,740,227
In 2011, the National Institute for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (NIEI), Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), and Merdeka Centre conducted a national voter registration audit. The main purpose was to assess the accuracy and completeness of the electoral rolls. 1177 ordinary voters were randomly sampled from 60 parliamentary constituencies.
The key findings indicated that 8% of these voters live on invalid addresses.
26% of these voters are unrecognisable voters meaning they could not be recognized by a neighbour or local resident. In short these voters' identity may not be valid.
Only 31% of these voters were living in their stated addresses.
The high number of non resident voters is a major concern and poses an unhealthy practice of democracy as per our First past the post system that is especially designed to provide for actual residents to elect their representatives in accordance with the local needs as per the knowledge and issues faced by the local residents.
Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (MERAP) detected around 100k problematic names based on 10 issues. Ong Kian Ming states if this number is added with other previously highlighted issues would easily mount to over 400k dubious voters in the electoral roll and that too is only the tip of the iceberg.
There are also a further 42,051 voters on the electoral roll whose IC could not be detected in the National Registration Department (NRD) database. Strangely the Election Commission (EC) Chief Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof finds this trivial as it only amounts to 0.3% of the master electoral roll of 12.6 million voters. It is a wonder if the EC chief could find anyone who is 0.3% pregnant in this world. One can either be pregnant or not and in this case the electoral roll must be viewed as "dirty" and nothing less. Even more hilarious is 42k out of 12.6 mil is actually 0.003% and not 0.3% as he had stated. Perhaps decimals are not a big issue in the EC !
Another mind boggling issue is that in the Voter registration audit report, it is clearly stated that the EC had given the total number of registered voters as of 31/03/2011 was 12,032,467 ! How is that so ???
BERSIH had also unearthed more instances of fraud in the latest electoral roll. It appears to be that there are 24,105 voters in Sabah and Sarawak who are allegedly re-registered in Selangor. The steering committee claimed that 15,520 Sabah voter and 8,585 Sarawak voters had been registered twice in Selangor in the latest updated electoral roll until first quarter of 2012.
Another alarming development that is brewing is the BN government appears to be rushing to pass the RELA Act in parliament. The 1st reading has been submitted and among the subject it states 'allowing RELA members to assist any security force or authority established under written law upon the latter's request'. Some are wondering if this is a backdoor method to eventually register the over 2 million strong RELA members or even a part of them as postal voters. After all there is a provision in postal voter regulation 3(f) which empowers the EC to designate any group as postal voter through gazette.
Looking at all these issues from a macroscopic point of view, it appears that BN are very determined to win the 13th GE and are willing to go to whatever extent to do so. PR's chances of coming to power are looking slimmer even though the crowds that are turning up at their ceramah's are swelling. In a free and fair elections, it is my personal opinion that PR will win hands down but in an elections that one has to 'first past the BN's post', PR would require a perfect storm of the unity and support of all races in Malaysia to do so.
The opposition parties and its leaders have long complained that BN has been practising unfair and illegal methods in most of the general election, to assure victory and consolidate their power. However it is only after 2008 that more light is being shed on the crooked ways that BN appears to be employing to win at all cost in the next general elections.
In more ways than one the race distance to the post for a BN victory appears to be getting shorter by the day at the expense of the opposition.
From the expert analysis of many political scientists and analysts like Wong Chin Huat and Ong Kian Ming as well as Electoral reform coalition BERSIH and civil society action group TINDAKMALAYSIA a clearer picture is beginning to unveil, the 13th GE is going to go down in Malaysia's history as the dirtiest elections ever.
The usual dirty tactics as always remains. BN being the ruling government is accused of controlling the mainstream media like the national television and radio broadcasts as well as the newspapers. Claims of the Federal money being utilised to fund their political campaigns, government machinery and facilities being abused, civil servants being bullied to assist are serial complaints from the opposition.
What is even more alarming is the revealing of elaborate methods being employed to dilute the power of the legitimate voters in this country.
Firstly are the outright rigging methods which include vote buying, ballot stuffing and counting/tabulation frauds.
Second is the rigging through the electoral roll. This is done by 3 methods:
a) Inclusion of non voters : Phantom voters. This includes dead people voting, non resident voters, non existent voters (cloning) and foreigners being given citizenship/MyKads.
b) Exclusion of legitimate voters who are omitted directly from the electoral roll.
c) Redelineation of constituencies: by altering the size and boundary of the electorate, one can affect the power of the ballot. Recently the EC had been doing this under the term 'border correction exercise'.
The number of registered voters who number more than 50,sharing a same address is 1262.
The number of new voters who have been 'registering' since BN lost its 2/3 majority in the last GE is nothing short but spectacular.
2008: 130,000
2009: 278,621
2010: 851,210
2011: 1,133,707
As of 31/12/2011 12,595,268 Malaysians have registered as qualified voters.
This sudden feverish spurt of 'voter register enlightenment' appears to show Selangor as its epicentre. Selangor registered 340k new voters since the last GE which is a 21.8% increase as compared to the national average of 16.3% increase in voter registration. Ong Kian Ming highlights that history appears to be repeating itself as the two states Sabah (after the 1990 elections) and Trengganu (after the 1999 elections) saw a sudden increase in the number of voters in the electoral roll after BN lost. Subsequently in the following GE respectively, miraculously BN came back to power in spectacular fashion.
The total number of registered voters in the previous GE's:
1995: 9,012,370
1999: 9,694,156
2004: 9,756,097
2008: 10,740,227
In 2011, the National Institute for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (NIEI), Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), and Merdeka Centre conducted a national voter registration audit. The main purpose was to assess the accuracy and completeness of the electoral rolls. 1177 ordinary voters were randomly sampled from 60 parliamentary constituencies.
The key findings indicated that 8% of these voters live on invalid addresses.
26% of these voters are unrecognisable voters meaning they could not be recognized by a neighbour or local resident. In short these voters' identity may not be valid.
Only 31% of these voters were living in their stated addresses.
The high number of non resident voters is a major concern and poses an unhealthy practice of democracy as per our First past the post system that is especially designed to provide for actual residents to elect their representatives in accordance with the local needs as per the knowledge and issues faced by the local residents.
Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (MERAP) detected around 100k problematic names based on 10 issues. Ong Kian Ming states if this number is added with other previously highlighted issues would easily mount to over 400k dubious voters in the electoral roll and that too is only the tip of the iceberg.
There are also a further 42,051 voters on the electoral roll whose IC could not be detected in the National Registration Department (NRD) database. Strangely the Election Commission (EC) Chief Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof finds this trivial as it only amounts to 0.3% of the master electoral roll of 12.6 million voters. It is a wonder if the EC chief could find anyone who is 0.3% pregnant in this world. One can either be pregnant or not and in this case the electoral roll must be viewed as "dirty" and nothing less. Even more hilarious is 42k out of 12.6 mil is actually 0.003% and not 0.3% as he had stated. Perhaps decimals are not a big issue in the EC !
Another mind boggling issue is that in the Voter registration audit report, it is clearly stated that the EC had given the total number of registered voters as of 31/03/2011 was 12,032,467 ! How is that so ???
BERSIH had also unearthed more instances of fraud in the latest electoral roll. It appears to be that there are 24,105 voters in Sabah and Sarawak who are allegedly re-registered in Selangor. The steering committee claimed that 15,520 Sabah voter and 8,585 Sarawak voters had been registered twice in Selangor in the latest updated electoral roll until first quarter of 2012.
Another alarming development that is brewing is the BN government appears to be rushing to pass the RELA Act in parliament. The 1st reading has been submitted and among the subject it states 'allowing RELA members to assist any security force or authority established under written law upon the latter's request'. Some are wondering if this is a backdoor method to eventually register the over 2 million strong RELA members or even a part of them as postal voters. After all there is a provision in postal voter regulation 3(f) which empowers the EC to designate any group as postal voter through gazette.
Looking at all these issues from a macroscopic point of view, it appears that BN are very determined to win the 13th GE and are willing to go to whatever extent to do so. PR's chances of coming to power are looking slimmer even though the crowds that are turning up at their ceramah's are swelling. In a free and fair elections, it is my personal opinion that PR will win hands down but in an elections that one has to 'first past the BN's post', PR would require a perfect storm of the unity and support of all races in Malaysia to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment