Do you know just how deep the abuses of our electoral system go? I didn’t. Got a better idea after attending a roundtable organised by BERSIH (but driven mostly by Pas, it looks like) about elections and democracy.
BERSIH consists of NGOs and political parties and was formed to highlight abuses as well campaign for better electoral practices. Strategically, their main thrust seems to be to focus primarily on three ‘demands’ that they seem to believe has the greatest effort-results yield ratio.
1) The use of indelible ink to mark voters (like in clubs), to ensure that no individual can vote more than once.
2) The clean-up of the electoral roll.
3) Abolishing votes by post.
Wong Chin Huat – likely the country’s leading expert on Malaysian electoral systems – opened the session explaining these things and providing other overviews. Syed Husin Ali spoke next, indicating a reluctance to boycott the Gen Elections, saying the Opposition should take advantage of the prevailing mood.
Lim Guan Eng followed with tales of how Elections Commision (SPR) head Tan Sri Abdul Rashid tried to play DAP and Pas of one another in meetings he had, and told of RM 110 mil being spent on posters the last election, far far exceeding the legal amount allotted. Playing to the Pas crowd, he mentioned: jika pilihanraya itu tidak halal, maksudnya kerajaan itu juga haram (and the crowd goes wild!)
Tuan Guru Hadi Awang spoke next, describing how in other countries, the opposition was regarded as a respected advisor to the government, whereas here they were an enemy that needed to be bullied – even the US was more democratic than Malaysia he said (true, but coming from Pas? cool :)
Quite a lot of generalities in the opening speeches, but as the floor opened up, lots more interesting stuff came out. It was a closed door session; I have decided that relating unattributed comments is far from ideal, but is the best ethical option for now.
When they were off the record, individuals went into great detail describing the shocking transgressions of electoral law in the country. People who have been intimately involved, including ex-BN politicians, described horror stories.
Some memorable ones: one address was found to be ‘home’ to 156 voters (bad enough? turns out that address had long been demolished for a highway project), a dead father of an opposition candidate was found to be voting for BN, and estate workers voting in the same government making their life a living hell in return for jerseys and assorted bits of furniture.
There were more, passionately shared, but I can’t remember or share them all :(
Other important/interesting issues raised:
- the National Registration Dept also has a lot to answer for, in regards to electoral irregularities
- Watchdog group MAFREL knows a lot about what’s going on in elections they’ve been observing on the ground; they work hard at being non-partisan, and are very strategic and long term results oriented with what they choose to reveal and such.
- boycotts are much more effective in Thailand where even a single candidate must be approved by a certain majority before a Parliament can be formed.
- our caretaker government is more like a don’t care government. Quite an involved issues, this caretaker stuff.
- votes in Malaysia are not secret; it is also easy to ascertain which way any one voting district polled – sparking fears among local communities that they may be ‘punished’ for voting Opposition :(
Some ideas and suggestions from the event:
- have civil society and opposition representatives in SPR
- go really strong on voter education. One chap from Pas also advocated seriously sensationalising and emotionalising the issues (his success story? Using Anwar Ibrahim’s mom yang bertongkat at ceramahs)
- PSM’s S. Arutchelvan proposed, among other things, a week-long super-concerted campaign on issues of electoral integriy.
- Another Pas chap strongly advocated getting other religious groups interested in this issue, feeling that they have strong motivational and mobilisational potential – reflecting their own experience I suppose. Interesting.
- When called on the comment, a student rep I see around often spoke of irregularities in campus elections as well as sending 21-yr olds to contest in places like Kepala Batas and Pekan, stating their absolute willingness to be bullied and cheated on for the sake of principles. Excellent.
- open avenues for citizen participation in advocacy that are less risky (than protests, etc) in order to broaden appeal and results.
Could go on forever, but will leave it at that for now. Had occasion to think of many things, hopefully will share with all as we go along.
