Difficulties in voter registration cited for Malaysians living abroad

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysians living abroad are having trouble registering as new voters through the country’s embassies and missions in nine cities, the former president of polls reform group Global Bersih said on Thursday (Sept 29).

Mr William de Cruz cited a Global Bersih survey — from Aug 31 to Sept 23 — in 10 cities, namely Singapore, Canberra, Melbourne, Wellington, Hong Kong, Chennai, Washington DC, New York City, London and The Hague (Netherlands).

“Malaysia’s high commission in Singapore stands out as the sole overseas mission in the survey to openly and efficiently offer facilities for both voter registration and postal voting to Malaysians abroad,” he said in an opinion piece that was published on news portal Malaysiakini.

He said that in Singapore, a Malaysian spent only 20 minutes to queue up and physically submit his application for voter registration, adding that the Malaysia’s High Commission in Singapore gave detailed information on the process for application and confirmation as registered voter.

He contrasted it with email enquiries to two overseas missions in Australia and India that were not responded to, as well as officials from some missions saying that any voter registration programme has to be first authorised by or referred to the Election Commission (EC).

He noted that an embassy in the US had told a Malaysian there that it did not get a reply to its email enquiry to the EC on voter registration and had also ran out of the “Borang A” or voter registration application forms.

Other overseas missions had asked Malaysians to download the application form from the EC’s website and hand it in to the EC when they return to Malaysia, he claimed.

He also said the Malaysian high commissions in London and Wellington had given outdated information by saying only civil servants, government scholarship recipients and uniformed personnel there were eligible for postal voting, highlighting that the EC had expanded this voting method before Election 2013 to most of the registered voters living abroad.

He then cited Global Bersih spokesman Lydia Chai as saying that the EC has to facilitate voter registration and let Malaysians know how they can vote from overseas again for the next general election.

“If GE14 is called in the first quarter of 2017, the last opportunity for eligible Malaysians to register as voters will be the end of this month (Sept 30),” she was quoted saying, adding that Global Bersih was ready to help EC convey accurate information to Malaysians residing abroad.

In 2012, the EC’s then deputy chairmanWan Ahmad Wan Omar had reportedly said that Malaysians abroad who wanted to register as voters should fill a form downloaded from the EC’s website, before mailing it together with a copy of their passport or identification card to the EC-appointed assistant voter registrar at the respective Malaysian embassies.

Under the EC’s reform introduced before the 13th general elections, Malaysians abroad who are registered voters can vote by post if they have returned to the country for a minimum of 30 days in the five years before the dissolution of Parliament. THE MALAY MAIL ONLINE