Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin yesterday said that he
voted in favour of the Election Offences Act Amendment Bill, which was rushed
through on the last day of the recent Parliament sitting, because it still
allowed safeguards.
Polling agents still have room to verify the identities of
voters despite the amendments, he told reporters after a debate with Bersih
co-chairperson Ambiga Sreenevasan over electoral reform in Petaling Jaya last
night.
Explaining one of the contentious amendment, Khairy
(
left) voted for the removal of candidates’ polling agents from the
Election Commission (EC) registration booths because the commission had
complained of trouble.
“In the last general election, the polling agents
although I’m not sure from which parties, were telling the EC clerks what to do.
They were campaigning and telling voters whom to vote for.”
He added that
polling agents can still set up their own booths 100 meters away from the
polling centre and monitor “suspicious voters”.
During the debate on
electoral reform, the Umno Youth chief reminded Bersih that the Dewan Rakyat
however did not pass one part of the amendment which had allowed the EC to
determine when the polling agents can enter the polling centre (usually a
classroom).
This, he said, would mean that agents can closely monitor if
the person entering the polling centre has been marked with indelible
ink.
He explained that removing the clause which requires for the
publisher and printer addresses to be printed on election materials does not
further encourage dirty politics.
“I have gone through one general
election and 20 by-elections and I swear on my life that I’ve never seen a
printer’s name on any poster that is defamatory.”
However, Khairy did not
respond to Ambiga’s question on the need for the deletion of the clause if it
was so inconsequential.
Baling should be
split
Answering a question posed by Bersih steering committee
member Wong Chin Huat on gerrymandering, Khairy said breaking up some
malapportioned constituencies carries its own set of problems.
He agreed
that rural Baling with over 70,000 voters, some 20,000 more than the Kedah
capital Alor Setar’s, should be split into smaller areas.
But this would
mean having to create more constituencies in Sabah and Sarawak as the agreement
when Malaysia was formed was one-third of parliamenatry constituencies would be
located in the Borneo states (and Singapore at that time).
While both Khairy and Ambiga (
left) had formidable
support from different sections of the audience of at least 600, Bersih
supporters appeared to monopolise the Q and A session.
Kicking off the
session was writer Kee Thuan Chye who challenged Khairy on his point that voters
were not “transferred” rather they were placed in their correct constituencies
when the EC did its border correction exercise.
Khairy had used the
example of Selangor Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim who recently found
himself as a Kuala Lumpur voter. He had been a Selangor voter for the past two
decades due to his Petaling Jaya voter registration.
“Why then did my
friend get transferred from Selangor to Kuala Kangsar (in Perak)?” Kee
asked.
Khairy, however, could not provide any answer and quickly jested
that this was “new evidence not admissible in court”.
He then derided
Bersih for having issues with the map used by EC: “The fact is there must be a
border. You don’t belive me, look at Google maps tonight.”
Responding to
this, Ambiga said a mapping expert engaged by Bersih also found difficulty
mapping out the constituencies as there were several different borders,
depending on which map one used.
“By the way, I understand that Tan Sri
Khalid is a Petaling Jaya ratepayer,” she said.
Dialogue with EC
Repeatedly returning to Bersih’s
distrust of the election commissioners, Khairy said that as a “man of peace” he
wants the NGOs coalition to have a dialogue with the EC and not engage in
confrontation.
Insisting that the EC is indefensible, Ambiga however
agreed to meet with the EC officials in the presence of parliamentarians from
Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat to thrash out electoral issues.
She,
nevertheless, pointed out that the reluctance of EC and the government to delay
the polls until all issues are resolved “smells disingenuous”.
Ambiga
added only two of the parliamentary select committee’s recommendations were
specified to take place before the polls.
“Why couldn’t they do it for
the rest? In Bangladesh they postponed elections for a year to clean up the
electoral roll,” she said.
Sidestepping this, Khairy played to the
gallery saying he was honoured that Ambiga thinks he is the prime minister, as
only PM Najib Abdul Razak knows when the polls would be.
He said that as
people who “played by the rules” BN will step down peacefully if it loses the
general election “just like (BN) handed over Penang, Kedah and Selangor in 2008,
Kelantan every year and Perak for a short while”.
“This is way above my
pay grade, but I can assure Malaysians that as a coalition in a respected
democracy, if we lose, we lose. There is no General Musharaf here...
“If
we lose, God forbid, if we lose,” he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment