I am shocked and disappointed by the caretaker Prime Minister's response to my attempt to ensure that 680,000 mainly young Malaysians will be allowed to exercise their right to vote in the forthcoming general election.  I am not a member of any political party and have no intention of standing in the general election, but believe that it is my right as a citizen to ensure that we can vote when we choose to - as ensured by the Constitution.

Many of my colleagues have been politically active, mainly in the ruling coalition; many university lecturers have gone on to become ministers, one even becoming his first Deputy Prime Minister (Tan Sri Musa Hitam); two of my former deans have served him as deputy ministers, one of whom became a Mentri Besar.  Although they were active in party politics while still in the university, many of us have always defended their right to do so although we have not done so ourselves.

In attacking me for not registering earlier, the BN controlled media suggested that it is one's democratic obligation to register to vote, and presumably, to ensure that all those registered exercise their right to vote. Now, I am being attacked for acting on their advice.

Over 680,000 new voters registered over six months ago in April-May 1999 to vote; they constitute almost seven per cent of those registered to vote. Since only about 70% of those registered actually vote, THE 680,000 CONSTITUTE ALMOST TEN PER CENT of those who will vote.  Obviously, they could decisively influence the outcome of the election.

In most years, only around 200,000 people sign up to vote.  The additional half million or so who signed up this year were probably moved by the events of the last 16 months to sign up. This is probably why we, mostly young Malaysians, are not being allowed to vote in the forthcoming tenth general elections.

Tun Salleh Abas - the widely respected former Solicitor General and Lord President - has advised us that the refusal of the Election Commission to allow the newly registered voters to vote on 29 November 1999 - ostensibly because the preparation and revision of the 1999 electoral roll are not complete - is not justified by Article 119 (4) of the Malaysian Constitution on "Qualification of electors"  which reads: "119(4): In this article 'qualifying date' means the date by reference to which the electoral rolls are prepared or revised."

Under Article 119(1), any citizen who has attained the age of 21 years on the "qualifying date" is entitled to vote in any election unless disqualified.  The "qualifying date" is "the date by reference to which the electoral rolls are prepared and revised".  The rolls were prepared and revised in April and May this year, i.e. when the Election Commission invited applications for registration of new voters or revision of the old ones.

The Constitution does not speak of "completion of the preparation or revision". The "qualifying date" must therefore be the date when the preparation or revision of the rolls commences.  The Constitution does NOT define the qualifying date as the date of the completion of the registration or revision. Hence, the Election Commission's claim that the exercise of the voting rights of the new voters depends upon the
completion of the preparation and revision of the electoral rolls amounts to an unconstitutional denial of our right to vote.

Parliament was also told that it was not unusual for the Election Commission to take eight months to prepare its electoral roll.  The Election Commission needing nine months to revise its electoral register
is laughably embarrassing. In countries requiring prior registration in order to vote, people can still vote by registering just before voting; in the forthcoming New Zealand general election on 27 November, for
instance, one can register the day before polling day.

Indonesia - a supposedly backward country in comparison to Malaysia with ten times our population, 125 million Indonesian voters and more than 300,000 polling stations spread throughout the vast archipelago - took only NINE DAYS  to finalise and to issue the final list of registered voters. Two months after the registration of voters from April 5 to May 4 this year, the voters were all set for voting on June 7.
[See http://www.asiasociety.org/publications/indonesia/#Table 2; Also see 'Timetable for the Elections' and 'Managing the Elections' on the web site.]

In Cambodia, the 1993 election (the first since the 1960s) was organised under far worse conditions. The process taken to register Cambodian voters was more tedious and problematic as the country was unfamiliar with national elections and lacked the infrastructure that would have eased registration, e.g. Cambodians did not have identity cards, and determining Cambodian citizenship was hardly straightforward. In Malaysia, there is no war, the infrastructure is much better, all the voters have identity cards, the Registration Department and the Election Commission are computerised, all the officials have been trained and this is not our first election (as in Cambodia), but our tenth.

Ministers in the last government told Parliament before its dissolution that there have been instances in previous general elections when voters could not vote because the new electoral rolls being prepared by the Election Commission were not ready when Parliament was dissolved.  This is simply untrue. In fact, there has never been a previous occasion in the past nine general elections since 1959 when new voters who had registered were disenfranchised supposedly because the new electoral roll was not ready.

I therefore applied to the High Court to prevent such an unconstitutional disenfranchisement of the 680,000 new voters by requiring the Election Commission to ensure that we can vote in the forthcoming general election.

The New Straits Times and Utusan newspaper groups have gone to extraordinary lengths to criticise me for not registering earlier.  If they are sincere about wanting all Malaysians to vote, I would have expected them to advocate compulsory voting a long ago and to criticise its opponents. In Malaysia, voting is not compulsory, and therefore, it is not necessary to register to vote or even to vote when one is registered, if one is so inclined. The Alliance, the predecessor of the National Front, objected when an opposition MP proposed compulsory voting in the 1960s.

Well over twenty per cent of the eligible adult Malaysian population are still not registered to vote, and about 30% of those registered do not actually vote.  In other words, almost half of Malaysia's adult citizens do not vote! Revelations about dead people still being on the electoral rolls and other phantom voters have further undermined confidence in the legitimacy of the electoral rolls.

In any case, I would expect the two media groups to fully support my current efforts to prevent the disenfranchisement of over 680,000 adult Malaysians.  I would also expect my critics, especially from among youth and student leaders, to enthusiastically support this initiative, which would mainly benefit the constituencies they ostensibly represent.
 

Jomo K. S.
Professor
19 November 1999