Dubious voter list cause for split polls, says Selangor
(The Malaysian Insider) – Selangor will announce its own date for state polls instead of following Putrajaya’s lead due to suspicions over the Election Commission’s (EC) voter registrations, the Mentri Besar’s Office said today.
Faekah Hussin, the political secretary to Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, said the issue would not have cropped up had the EC shown it was independent and capable of cleaning up the electoral roll, suspected to be padded to give the Barisan Nasional (BN) federal coalition the edge in the 13th national polls.
“Despite strong evidence presented, the EC has failed to act appropriately and has instead given strange and unreasonable excuses.
“We want the EC to carry out its responsibilities independently and not follow the BN’s lead or that of partisan politics,” she said in a statement today.
Calling the EC “the BN’s spokesman”, Faekah criticised it for showing partisanship by claiming that holding state polls separately from the general election to elect federal representatives would incur an extra RM30 million burden on the Treasury.
Faekah disclosed that the state government and the EC had met recently to discuss the elections professionally, even though MB Khalid’s administration was dissatisfied with the commission’s handling of a questionable spike of 42,000 voters registered in several constituencies in the state.
She said the issue of wasting public funds had not been raised in the two-hour meeting despite the EC being informed of the PR supreme council’s decision at the outset.
Faekah described the EC’s claim of not wanting to waste public funds was a poor argument, and highlighted Putrajaya’s widely reported financial profligacy that ranged from the RM250 million allocation for the National Feedlot Centre (NFC) project to its write-off of former MAS chairman Tan Sri Tajudin Ramli’s RM589 million debt and the RM900 million government grant to highway builder Maju Holdings.
She stressed that the decision to call for state election was the prerogative of the respective state mentri besar or chief minister.
She then demanded the EC’s top-ranking officers resign and contest under the BN banner if they wished to play politics.
