KUCHING: The Election Commission (EC) has been urged to consider postal voting as options for Sarawakians and Sabahans in the upcoming states election.
Bersih Sarawak chairperson Ann Teo said the NGO was disappointed with minister in the Prime Minister’s Department responsible for law who had ruled out the possibility of giving Sarawakians residing outside the state the right to cast their vote by postal ballot.
“We are of the view that if the EC is ready to extend postal voting to Sarawakians and Sabahans who live, study or work outside the state in other parts of Malaysia and whose voting addresses are still in their home state, it is a matter of simple notification by way of gazette,” she said in a statement on Friday.
She said Regulation 3(1)(e) of the Elections (Postal Voting) Regulations 2003 provides that any person who has registered as an elector under the Elections (Registration of Electors ) Regulations 2002 and is ‘a member of any category of persons designated as postal voters by the Election Commission from time to time by notification in the Gazette shall on receipt of a postal ballot paper, be entitled to vote as a postal voter at an election in accordance with these Regulations’.
“This was done during the last general election to extend postal voting to staff from government agencies who were on duty on polling day,” she said.
She urged that the EC extend the same right to all other overseas Malaysians and specifically Sarawakians who will have the state election due in June 2021, and Sabahans who will go to the poll in 60 days time.
“The current Covid-19 pandemic has presented more barriers for Sabahans and Sarawakians to travel home to vote.
“Other than the health risks posed to those who travel by flight and public transportation, the much lesser frequency and costs of flights across the South China Sea will be added burden to them.
“Under these circumstances a large chunk of Sarawakians and Sabahans will be excluded from exercising their democratic rights to choose their wakil rakyat (elected representative) and indeed to determine the future of their home state if the right to vote including the option to vote via postal ballot is not extended to them,” she pointed out.
Teo noted that a leading political scientist and analyst Dr Bridget Welsh had recently estimated that 25 percent of East Malaysian voters were in the Peninsula or Singapore.
Hence, she said based on the voting population of Sarawak with 1.24 million registered voters as of the first quarter of this year, and Sabah at 1.12 million, an approximate 600,000 of them were studying, living and working in Malaya and Singapore.
