PSC members slam EC for failure to clean voters' roll

Pakatan MPs on the parliamentary select committee (PSC) for electoral reform today slammed the Election Commission (EC) for its "recalcitrance" and "failure" to clean up the electoral roll.

"We are of the stand that the suggestions (of the committee) will never be implemented by the EC," PKR's Gombak MP Azmin Ali told reporters in the lobby of Parliament House today.

"The electoral roll, for one, is still dirty and not cleaned up," he said.

Azmin (left), along with PAS' Kuala Krai MP Hatta Ramli and DAP's Rasah parliamentarian Anthony Loke, held an emergency press conference today to condemn the EC for its failure to address serious problems with the electoral roll.

During these meetings, Azmin said, the EC testified that it could not clean up the electoral roll because it has no power to remove names that even it confirmed as "dubious".

Azmin referred to the 42,000 names the EC had agreed were dubious as they lacked proper addresses and details.
According to him, the EC said it was powerless to take off the gazetted official electoral roll as that would be against the law, despite promising to do so earlier.

This, he argued, was in contrast to names of strangers listed as voters addressed at his mother's house in Klang Gate Village, which the EC removed five years after his initial complaint about it.

"The EC is not consistent," sniped Azmin.

'EC wilfully misleading the PSC'

He slammed the commission for such antics, accusing it of being uncooperative and wilfully misleading the PSC.

"The EC was stubborn... It gave false information and acted irresponsibly."

Loke when addressing the press conference handed out copies of a Malaysian Institute of Microelectronic Systems (Mimos) report that focused on voters who shared the same address and listed addresses with more than 100 registered voters.

"All over Malaysia, there are 354 addresses at which 79,098 voters are registered," Loke said.

The voters, he alleged, shared incomplete addresses, which was one of the defects in the electoral roll. He pointed out one example where 1,827 voters shared an address in Pekan Ranau, Sabah.

Hatta (left) said the EC's sudden increase in its projected workforce for the coming general election was a source of worry, as the EC was adamant that it's staff picked for GE duty will be postal voters.

Hatta said that more than 240,000 EC staff was an increase of 100,000 staff from the previous polls.

This, he said, was worrisome as the committee had worked hard to reduce postal voters by recommending that policemen and military personnel vote as advance voters.

However, whatever gains they made in the move, which saw postal voters reduced by 100,000 security personnel, was being offset by the EC staff increase.

The MPs said the PSC should compel the EC to toe the line and implement the PSC recommendations, including cleaning up the electoral roll, or risk making a farce of the the select committee and its electoral reform agenda.