EC Powerful or Powerless?

EC indeed has power to reject registration, says DAP
Kuek Ser Kuang Keng
1:39PM Jun 6, 2012

DAP today attempted to prove that contrary to the Election Commission’s (EC) earlier claim, the panel actually has the power to reject the registration of voters with incomplete or inaccurate details.

During a press conference held at the party’s headquarters this morning, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang and national publicity secretary Tony Pua (right) furnished the party’s records that showed voter registration forms submitted to the commission had been rejected due to various reasons.

These reasons include the addresses given by the voters were different from the addresses recorded in their MyKad, voters did not state their religion in the forms or they had given a different religion from the one recorded in their MyKad.

Those forms were submitted to the state EC office last year by DAP assistant registrars appointed by the EC.

“They told us the forms were incomplete so they were rejected, so it is within their power to do so,” Tony said.

“Hence the comment made by the EC chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof was completely reckless. He was trying to defend the indefensible action of registering dodgy voters to support the government.”

Pua was referring to Abdul Aziz’s statement to Malaysiakini yesterday that the commission has no right to reject the registration of voters with incomplete and dubious addresses as long as they are in the records of the National Registration Department (NRD).

If these registrations receive no objection from local residents and are subsequently gazetted, whatever critics have to comment would have no effect unless the voters themselves applied for changes, Abdul Aziz added.

Abdul Aziz was asked to comment on political researcher Ong Kian Ming's recent findings that many new voters registered by a government agency (not the EC) have code 71 in their identity numbers but without house numbers and street names.

Code 71 indicates that those voters were born outside of Malaysia.

The lack of complete addresses make it difficult for political parties to trace these voters and verify if they are valid voters in the areas they are registered.

Ong further raised the question whether these dubious voters were given identity cards by the NRD to vote in the election.