KUALA LUMPUR: At least 24 days is required for overseas voting instead of the two weeks proposed by the Election Commission (EC), electoral reform NGO Tindak Malaysia said yesterday.
With the 13th general election fast approaching, EC deputy chief Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar told ABC Radio Australia last Wednesday that there would be two weeks between the nomination and polling days for ballot papers to be sent overseas, for the casting of votes, and for the tallying of votes back at their respective constituencies in Malaysia on polling day.
“Two weeks definitely not enough,” Tindak Malaysia representative PY Wong told The Malaysian Insider yesterday.
“What we need is to challenge the EC. Give us a detailed breakdown for each operation... the important thing is to give overseas voters a proper opportunity to vote, not to have a sandiwara (drama) where you give them postal votes and it doesn’t come back in time,” he added.
Wan Ahmad told ABC Radio Australia that there will be enough time if the ballot papers arrive back in Kuala Lumpur one week after being sent to Australia, for example.
“Because within that one week, the final one week, you have time to send these ballot papers to sort out and send these ballot papers, to the respective constituencies, where the returning officer will count the ballot papers what are called after, after pm the closing time of the polling, of the ordinary polling in Malaysia,” he said.
But Wong pointed out that eight days, starting from nomination day, would be required for ballot papers to be printed, sent to EC’s headquarters in Putrajaya, then to returning officers in each constituency, and back to EC Putrajaya.
Another 14 days would be needed for the EC in Putrajaya to send ballot papers to various embassies and to have them returned to administrative capital, before subsequently sorting and sending the ballot papers to respective returning officers that would take another two days.
Below is Wong’s breakdown of the overseas voting process:
Nomination Day, Day 1: Identify candidates and their sequence on the ballot paper through drawing lots.
Day 3: Government printer prints ballot papers.
Day 4: Ballots sent to EC in Putrajaya.
Day 5: EC in Putrajaya sends postal ballots to EC in each state.
Day 6: State ECs distribute to ballots the returning officer (RO) for each constituency. RO informs the candidate.
Day 7: RO and the polling agent for postal voting (PACAPOS) distribute postal ballots and seal in main envelope.
Day 8: RO dispatches postal ballots to EC in Putrajaya.
Day 9: EC in Putrajaya sends postal ballots to the Foreign Ministry.
Day 12: Foreign Ministry delivers postal ballots to various embassies.
Day 15: Embassy informs postal voters by post or posts to them.
Day 18: Postal voter returns ballot to the embassy.
Day 21: Embassy couriers return postal ballots to the Foreign Ministry.
Day 22: Foreign Ministry sends postal ballots to EC in Putrajaya.
Day 23: EC in Putrajaya sorts out and sends direct to ROs.
Day 24: Postal ballots reach the RO.
Wong said that three days also needed to be set aside for public holidays and possible delays, making it a total of 27 days.
“The critical ones are those which don’t have embassies or consular offices and those in continent-size countries. Example Brazil, US, Australia, Russia or China,” he said.
“It appears their procedure is to require a postal voter to fly to the embassy to collect the postal vote and vote immediately and they are given 24 hours notice to do so and have one day to vote. This is quite unusual,” the activist added.
He stressed that Tindak Malaysia would be “happy for the EC to prove us wrong.”
“What we want is transparency and confidence that the EC has done their homework to ensure that overseas postal voters can return their ballot in time,” said Wong.
Wan Ahmad said in the interview that EC in Putrajaya could send the ballot papers to returning officers around the country in a day.
“We have all the means, we have the plans, we have scheduled programmes relating to this. It’s not a problem,” he said.
He added that those living in southern Thailand, Singapore, Brunei and Kalimantan were not allowed to be postal voters as they lived close to Malaysia.
“People like, people in Singapore, for example, they just cross the Causeway and come back, to where they are registered to vote, so are those in Brunei. So most Malaysians who are in Brunei, they are mostly from either from Sarawak or from the state of Sabah, and those who are in Kalimantan, they are mostly Malaysians from Sarawak,” said Wan Ahmad.
EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said last Wednesday that to date, the EC has received 125 applications from Malaysians abroad who wished to vote by post in the 13th general election that must be called by April.
- Boo Su-Lyn / The Malaysian Insider
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/doubts-cast-over-two-week-overseas-voting-period/
