Malaysiakini
Regina Lee
May 29, 10
7:37pm
PKR Youth fired a salvo at the Elections Commission (EC) today for deliberately hampering the party’s efforts to register new voters.
They claim that the EC has been stopping the party from registering new assistant registrars, as well as limiting the availability of voter registration forms.
Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar recounted her experiences, saying that she had applied to the EC earlier this year to replace the assistant registrars, but they only got back to her a month later telling her the process has been “frozen temporarily”.
Only EC-approved assistant registrars, who are appointed by political parties, can accept applications from new voters.
“The EC was threatening to withdraw some of our assistant registrar status, saying that they were not doing enough work.
“It’s true that some of them were not active enough, but now they won’t even let us change them.
“We are not asking for additional assistant registrars, but just to be allowed to change them,” she said at a hastily-arranged press conference on the sidelines of the party’s sixth annual congress in Kota Bharu.
Pantai Jerejak state assemblyperson Sim Tze Tzin also complained that voter registration forms in Penang were limited to 100 a month per assistant registrar officers.
“This is a ridiculous number. I can register 1,000 people a day and they want to only give us 100 a month,” he decried.
Aspiring voters are required to fill out official registration forms issued by the EC and photocopies are not allowed.
Youth chief demands for EC boss’ head
In the wake of the problems involving the voter registration drive, PKR Youth chief Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin called on EC chief Abdul Aziz Yusof to step down.
“If the EC can’t even perform their duties well, he might as well resign,” he said, adding that EC has one week to explain its tardiness over the issue.
“I believe that this is all a deliberate and concerted effort to dampen our aggressive efforts to get all the 4.5 million eligible voters to register.”
New and younger voters are generally seen as more prone to vote for the opposition.
Shamsul said that given the bureaucratic problems involved in the voter registration, it is high time for the EC to implement automatic registration.
“If other countries like in the UK can do it, why can’t we?” he asked.
The government has knocked down the proposal for the automatic registration of voters.
