More than a million Chinese yet to register as voters

(The Star) – China Daily quoted Election Commission chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Yusof as saying that there are more than 4.8 million Chinese who are qualified to vote, but more than 1.1 million of them had yet to register as voters.

“They claimed that they could not take time off to register. In fact, they were only concerned about their personal matters, and were not really interested in carrying out their duties as citizens,” he said, adding that it takes only five minutes to register.

He said Selangor had the highest number of Chinese voters, followed by Johor and Perak. About 70% of them had registered as voters.

The states with the least number of Chinese voters are Perlis and Terengganu.

“There are more than 40,000 Chinese voters in these two states, with 37,427 of them registered as voters,” he said.

Abdul Aziz, however, said the mindset of Chinese voters had changed over the years.

“Twenty years ago, the Chinese used to vote for a particular party without looking at the candidates. Now they are also very concerned with the candidates’ performance,” he added.