DAP blames EC for low overseas postal voter registrations
Ong pointed out that he received many questions from overseas Malaysians last Wednesday – the day Parliament was dissolved – about how to register as postal voters.
Boo Su-Lyn, TMI
The DAP blamed the Election Commission (EC) today for the registration of only 6,298 Malaysian voters abroad, or 0.6 per cent, out of about a million Malaysians living overseas.
The Star Online reported EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof as saying yesterday that the low figures were “quite disappointing”, despite the polls regulator providing a “convenient registration process”.
“The announcement for overseas postal voting was only done on January 21st, 2013, after the gazetting of the Quarter 4, 2012 electoral roll,” DAP election strategist Dr Ong Kian Ming said in a statement today.
“This meant that those Malaysians overseas who had not yet registered as a voter, which is probably the majority of them, were not eligible to apply to be an overseas postal voter after the announcement of the EC guidelines on overseas voting,” he added.
Ong also accused the EC of not “aggressively” reaching out to overseas Malaysians before January to register as regular voters first, before registering as postal voters.
“As far as I know, the EC did not allocate any budgetary resources, nor did it work with Wisma Putra, to conduct an aggressive voter registration exercise for Malaysians overseas,” said Ong.
He also noted that advocacy group MyOverseasVote found out last July that several Malaysian embassies and consulates had received inconsistent information on who could register as regular voters through them.
“This shows the serious failure on the part of the EC to communicate and implement a standard registration procedure among the Malaysian embassies and consulates,” he said.
Ong pointed out that he received many questions from overseas Malaysians last Wednesday – the day Parliament was dissolved – about how to register as postal voters.
“This clearly shows that the EC failed in its outreach to Malaysian voters which resulted in the low number of registrations,” he said.
