The existence of 42,051 doubtful voters – trivial?

ARCHIVES 2012

By admin-s On Apr 23, 2012

If the “doubtful” 42,051 voters “manage” to vote in the 13th General Election, it could influence up to 42 parliamentary and state seats with a 1,000 votes majority. If it is a 300 vote majority, it could influence up to 140 seats.

Sing Chye Choo

I find it rather perplexing to find BN MPs queuing up in gusto arguing on the side of the Election Commission based merely on flimsy presumptions that it is fair. Their reasoning does not seem to correlate with the reality on the ground and their mental capacity or intelligence which is indicated in their degrees or PhDs, leaves much to be desired.

How could the Election Commission chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof Abdul Aziz in a recent press conference assert that the registry is clean even with the existence of 42,051 “doubtful voters”? Ridiculously, this assertion found endorsement from UMNO and BN. More disturbing to the common rakyat is that it actually comes from the so-called intellectual elites of UMNO.

One must bear in mind that the primary duty of the Election Commission is to upkeep the electoral roll so that it is clean and free from doubt. If elections are refereed based on this doubtful electoral roll then, legitimacy of the newly elected government will be in question. Should this situation occur, the EC should be brought to task by not only by MPs and SAs from the government or the opposition, but most importantly from the raykat.

Thus, we cannot downplay the significant role played by a small number of voters and it should not be taken lightly!
For an example, in the 1964 British General Elections, “if a total of 350 Labour voters had stayed at home in 5 constituencies (Brighton, Kemptown, Wellingborough, King’s Lynn and Colne Valley), Labour would not have recaptured power after an interval of 13 years in opposition”. (1)

The 1750 votes seemed trivial but without them, the Labour would not have been voted into power. And one of the most important and enduring new policy that the new Labour government introduced was to put an end to the British’s leading role in the World stage – the British withdrawal from the East of Suez (Persian Gulf, Malaysia and Singapore 1964-1968) would not have happened!