I refer to a Malaysiakini report on the Bersih forum on Feb 21.

The Election Commission’s (EC) deputy chairperson Wan Ahmad Wan Omar reportedly claimed that they had spent 10 million of the election administration budget to ferry voters from interior by helicopters to enable them to exercise their voting right - this is nothing but a blatant lie that you could have verified before reporting it.

While the claim might be motivated to give undue credit to the EC on its effort to empower the rural folks with voting power, what really happened is exactly the opposite: over half of the eligible adults in Sarawak's interior are denied their voting rights due to the various obstacles put in the way of such citizens to even register as a voter - what more to go to vote in an EC chartered helicopter!

Some facts that speak for themselves: Batang Ai has 22 000 residents but only 8,000 voters; Belaga has 23,000 residents but only 7,000 voters; Lawas has 30,000 residents but only 7,000 voters.

For a start the Sarawak Election Commission's budget for the last state elections in 2006 was only RM30 million. Much of it was used for transporting the officials and ballot boxes - not the voters!

Easily half of the 1 million or so voters in Sarawak live in the interior areas with transport problems - how many helicopters will be needed to send them to vote - and go back?

The sheer impracticality of transporting voters en-mass by helicopters would have caused this outrageous suggestion to be thrown out of the ...well, helicopter! In fact Malaysia doesn't even have enough helicopters to ferry its election officials around - they have to rent them from Indonesia at every election!

Back to reality: the obstacles which are put in the way of Sarawakians who want to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed voting rights:

1. Lack of district offices to facilitate registration

There is only 1 EC office in Sarawak, that is in Kuching; then the post offices and district offices can be quite far from where the interior residents live; voters’ registration through these passive, distant points are slow, as admitted by the EC themselves;

2. Voter registration obstacles not addressed

Then lately party officials have been entitled to get appointed as assistant registrars to go around to register voters. However they have to collect the voter’s application forms from Kuching and return them to Kuching.

Just imagine the great distance between Miri and Kuching (14 hour drive) to understand how such assistant registrars may be hampered to help register the voters; as though this is not enough the assistant registrars are only allowed to collect 100 forms at a time, and they need to return the forms before more can be given out. And that is if the EC office doesn't run out of forms due to all of Putrajaya's printers going on strike!

Then, say the assistant registrars some how managed to sign up hundreds of voters, the forms still take months before they are approved: officially 3 - 4 months but in practice can go up to 6 - 10 months due to bureaucratic vigour!  

It was only after a year-long campaign through various meetings by NGOs with the EC that the EC Putrajaya finally agreed to appoint willing and able NGOs to serve as Assistant registrars.

But still, the appointments in Sarawak have not been done yet!

3. Lack of distance voting facilities puzzling for large state

In many longhouses youths are working in towns, off shore on oil rigs, or in Peninsular cities. It would incur a great cost for these voters to fly back to cast their vote. That explains the much lower voting rates in Sarawak (60+ percent) compared to Peninsular (about 70+ percent).

Why isn't it arranged for this sizable number of voters to cast their votes as absentee voters as the police and military personnel are allowed to, or for polling stations be set up in major towns to enable this major age group to exercise of their voting rights?

Just across the border the Indonesian government does all these and more, even bringing ballot boxes into hospitals and prisons to enable their citizens found in those conditions to cast their vote!

Since Indonesia is acknowledged as a poorer country than Malaysia it is definitely not an issue of cost, but of the value Malaysian government put on the voting rights of the citizens.

4. Indonesians get Mykads while East Malaysians don’t

And another issue, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Sarawakians (there is no reliable official statistics) have problems obtaining personal documents which are needed to register as a voter. But 60 percent residents of a Kalimantan border town, Puring Kencana, according to a few Indonesians' studies, hold Malaysian Mykads reportedly obtained through legal means.    

5. Arguments against auto registration ridiculous

If the EC has such problems to register most of the eligible voters, why don’t they support automatic registration? In one stroke 4.5 million citizens are empowered to vote and the EC can save its millions used to register voters one by one!

Then Wan Ahmad claims that automatic registration of voters would benefit the urban voters, which run counter to the above picture that over half the interior residents of Sarawak would be the potential beneficiaries! And whether urban or rural citizens benefit, why would anyone have a problem with them becoming voters, much less the EC?

Wan Ahmad then gives the excuse that there is a constitutional restriction to implement automatic registration of voters, claiming that citizens need to `apply' to become a voter, as required by the constitution.

Well, application can be just a request at a polling station by showing your IC, as done in Indonesia! To make it a bit more complicated every citizen who attains the voting age can be asked by the JPN to `apply' as a voter. This is actually done by the city/district councils in many other countries too. So why not for Malaysia? As the saying goes: where there is a will there is a way.

6. Is EC guilty of voter suppression?

In many countries where a big section of citizens are persistently kept away from voting, it is a serious problem known as voters suppression. Voters suppression is well recognised worldwide as a trick to keep the voting power from certain citizens, for example the African Americans and Latin Americans in USA.

In this respect, Malaysia has for over half a century seen the problem of low voter registration among Sarawakians that seemingly cannot be solved; or is it intended to keep those under-registered groups from voicing their choice in the state’s and the country's leadership?

Sarawak has persistently been the `champion' among all Malaysian states in regards to non-voter registration of its citizens, with 33.6 percent of eligible citizens unregistered. This is a question that the EC and the politicians need to answer seriously, whenever they claim how hard they try or how much they spend, to help the citizens to vote.

The send-them-to-vote-by-helicopter claim, if confirmed, must count as a sick joke when one looks at the reality where over half of Sarawakians in the vast interior (where majority of seats are located) will be denied a vote at the coming state election!

General ignorance of West Malaysians on the East does not help to stop this sickening state of affairs.

Ong BK is from the Malaysian Election Observers Network (MEO-Net)