Next up, two-prong Bersih campaign

 

 

Electoral reform movement Bersih has launched a two-prong ‘vote and monitor’ campaign to address the "worrying" state of the electoral system, in particular the electoral roll.

"We call on all those who can, to go out to vote in large numbers as a bulwark against electoral fraud,” co-chairperson A Samad Said told a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.

"They should also be careful and (watchful) ...  to monitor and point out any possible fraud, to ensure that election officials do not engage in questionable practices.”

Labelling the Parliamentary Select Committee on electoral reforms as a “100 percent failure” and the Election Commission as “untrustworthy”, the national laureate known affectionately as Pak Samad said as such, it has fallen to the rakyat to rise up and reclaim their right to clean and fair elections.

He reiterated that only by coming to vote in numbers can they hope to neutralise electoral fraud, which in many cases involved phantom voters who flood electoral districts to tip the balance in favour of certain candidates.

 

Initiative to track complaints

 

For the “monitoring” part of the campaign, Bersih has joined hands with election watchdogs Jom Pantau and Tindak Malaysia.

Jom Pantau, explained its representative Arul Prakkash who was also at the press conference, is an initiative to track complaints of electoral fraud and post it online for the public to witness and hopefully see action from the authorities.

The public can report any such cases via SMS, email, Twitter, phone or online and the cases will be verified and displayed at http://www.pru13.info.

Meanwhile, PY Wong from Tindak Malaysia said that his organisation trains members of the public to become polling agents.

Tindak Malaysia is looking to train up to 80,000 polling agents to help monitor the upcoming election.

It is hoped that both the training provided by Tindak Malaysia and the “shame and name” ability of Jom Pantau will help detect and prevent cases of electoral fraud.