Election Commission chief Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman speaks frankly on the controversial redelineation exercise, phantom/planted voters, and the government-controlled media in this final of a three-part exclusive interview with malaysiakini .

Malaysiakini: On the issue of redelineation exercise, the seats in Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah were not increased. The opposition claimed that this exercise was to curb PAS electoral changes...

Abdul Rashid : They (opposition) don't understand the process (of the redelineation exercise). According to the law, our first step in making changes is to send our proposal to the government, to the prime minister. They are the first people to scrutinise the proposals. What can we do? Of course, we are given the freedom to recommend, but on the number (seats), they have the control.

So can we presume that there were proposals to increase the seats in those states?

You don't make life difficult for me! [Laughs] We are very experienced people. This is my third limitation exercise, so we know which area can be increased (the number of seats) and where not to. We know exactly what we are doing. We are experts in the area... you name a place and we will know what is in that place.

People say that we take the actions solely because of political consideration, when the stability of the country is also our responsibility. Mind you, we cannot just ignore this. We make sure that the minorities are not sidelined.

Why then was there no increase on the number of seats in Kedah? Was it because PAS is getting stronger there?

We do not need to explain our policy to people all the time. What we try to do is to balance (the different racial groups). This is a national aspiration. We all run this country together, we should not talk about racial groupings. Because, you know, all political parties are racial! I have to break this. It is my responsibility. I don't have to tell this to world.

You have a hero here you know, sitting in front of you! [Laughs] An unsung hero! I played a major role to stabilise the country. I want to make sure that all races work together to win a seat. I'll do it whenever I can. I can't do it in Kelantan because except for Kota Bharu where there are some Chinese, other parts of the state has Malays as the majority. But, you look at Selangor and study the pattern. I made sure in each Chinese (majority) constituency, there is 30 percent Malays.

So, if you go as a racial political party, you can never dream of winning. What I am trying to do is to encourage a two-party system. Therefore, it is stupid for the opposition to quarrel with one another, even over stupid things like seat.

They're still singing the old song. What is this? Please change. Look at yourself in the mirror. You are still singing the old song after 40 years. It's time to change. Political parties based on racial and religious grounds can never win the country. Well they can survive... win one or two states, stay there quietly, talking like hell in parliament but where do you get from there? Nowhere!

Do you have an alternative party in this country other than BN. Alternative to the BN? You tell me who. Can PAS do it? They have zero seats in Sabah and Sarawak but yet they talk about taking over the government. You go and tell them!

So your plan is for a racially-mixed constituency?

Yes that is my intention. In areas where there is no point for me to do so, I don't change. I was looking at the issue from a different angle, not just the government telling us not to increase seats in Kelantan, Terengganu or Kedah, no... I don't increase seats in constituency where it is very racial.

What about the weightage of the constituencies, shouldn't there be more seats in areas with a high number of voters?

Weightage is a bit difficult. Yes, there are arguments in favour of one man-one vote weightage. That would probably allow a bit of leverage there. It will be there (in the system) one day. But there must be certain percentage.

I thought EC has an allowance for no more than 25 percent difference in voters among the constituencies...

No we don't. It's difficult to do it due to the demography and geography of the country.

The recent delimitation exercise has increase the number of seats which are over this percentage...

Yes, I admit that it had gone up. But if you look at it this way: we have got this difficult country, very small number yet huge area to cover but the area is getting smaller. If you study from the first, second, third and fourth (delimitation exercise) you can see we managed to reduce the size of area.

We managed to do this over time as communication improves, better roads... This justify the (increase in) number (of seats). But when we do a comparison with one delimitation to another based on uniformity - in number (of voters) as well as the area - we have got seven categories.

The first (category) is the 'city'. So if you want to compare a city with Kota Kinabalu, this is not fair. If we want to make comparison, we can do so for example between Bukit Bintang and maybe Georgetown.

Then we have 'town', 'semi-urban', 'semi-rural', 'rural' and 'remote'. So if according to these uniformity, the delimitations that had been done are very consistent. So you must compare within categories and not between them.

On the issue of phantom voters, the PM said there are 2.8 million phantom voters - that's a huge number, almost 30 percent of the electoral rolls.

PM has been misled into believing that the 2.8 million are phantom voters. He is busy and then some people came and advised him that by taking the electoral rolls in our system and superimpose them with the list at national registration. If you do that, I think, there are 3.5 million voters with different address. But that does not mean that they are phantom voters.

Who lives on the address stated in their IC? I don't. People move, they get married, they change jobs. We have 300,000 new voters since July last year. We wrote to these people telling them where they are registered. Ninety percent did not reply.

Is it a violation not to vote in the constituency according to your IC address?

No, but there is the other category, the planted voters. PAS is doing this! PAS has done it cleverly. (The number is) not so much but (they do it) every year under the old law. They found it convenient to do so because there were plenty of loopholes. We were also relaxed then. These are religious people, cheating.

They cannot get angry with me (for saying this) because when I challenge them during our open dialogue, I confronted them, I told them you did it! They did not say anything, scared. I read the recent Harakah , nothing was said about me. I told them if you publish (about EC) in Harakah , I am going public with this. We'll have public debates and I have in my drawer, bundles of evidence. Don't play the fool with me.

In the next general election, must all voters vote at places according to their address?

Only new voters. The old voters remain. Well, we are making some investigations, that people who do not stay in the area but show their faces on polling day.

There are, of course, the real phantom voters where people using dead people's identity to vote. This is rampant in Sabah and Sarawak. We have also weed out 20,000-30,000 voters who stayed in Thailand. They don't have any connection at all with the country, yet they come on polling day.

Are the phantom voters a huge number?

No, it is a small percentage. We are very efficient in taking out their names (from the electoral rolls). Where it is within our control, we are very good. We make sure those who are stripped off their voting rights, for example those who has been jailed for a year a more, will not be able to cheat.

Why are the unregistered voters not interested to register?

It's just their attitude. It is not that they are not interested. But they simply do not want to find the time to go register. There are two million qualified voters not registered and 400,000 of them live in the Klang valley.

I have told the people (in the commission), that we should find other means to get them to register or make things attractive to them. Information, posters on election registration should be done in shopping complexes or areas where they hang out. Here, we need to get the help of political parties. Although they are not trustworthy, we still need their help.

What about online registration?

Yes, we have taken steps to allow online registration. It will be announced soon. It will definitely be in place before the next election. The system is all ready to allow people to register online free of charge. Maybe, this will make it easier for the youths to register. I cannot make the announcement yet because I still need to get the answer from the legal department.

What was the reason for the hiking the election deposit to RM20,000?

No, it's not RM20,000 - that is the ceiling price. We have decided to impose RM10,000 for parliamentary seat and RM5,000 for state seat in the coming election.

The hike was made because we try to reduce the number of candidates who are not serious, people who come in with hope of being bought over. We have characters who put in their name, wait outside to be called, when they are called, (there is) some short (of a) discussion, they will suddenly pull out. Double the money, withdraw- lah !

What about getting balanced election coverage from the mainstream media?

The mainstream media is privately owned. I cannot do much. I can advise but nothing more. What do you expect, they are owned by the politicians.

With official media like (state-owned) RTM1 and 2, we are trying to set some rules (adopted) although the power is within the minister. We tell them that we hope that they will not use these channels to promote their parties or candidates. They can publicise government achievements only.

But publicising government achievements can also indirectly promote the candidates...

Yes, indirectly. But we try to prevent direct promotion of party candidates. They also cannot condemn other parties on TV. We have asked them this. We tell them, give us a bit of face, pity us. Be a bit tolerant. After all, I think BN is going to fare better (in the coming election)... show that we (the EC) have some independence.

I have also proposed that private channels sell air time to political parties but this can be very expensive and the poor parties cannot afford (such fees).

To RTM, I asked the minister to give 10 to 15 minutes of air time to opposition parties for them to explain party policies and platform, talk about their economic, education, social or religious policies. Of course, PAS will talk on this, then people will go to sleep [laughs].

You had very strong words about party hoppers...

Yes, I hate to see a candidate winning under one ticket and later hop to another party. They should resign and allow for re-election. I don't remember when I made the statement. I was asked about it and I gave my opinion. I didn't ask for this job after 17 years as EC secretary. I retired, (but) the ball seemed to be rolling back at my feet.

There are words that Sabah may want to have a separate state election... Do you prefer a simultaneous election instead?

Yes, of course. The states have the power to dissolve but a simultaneous election would be easier. It will save money. I see there is no need for them to do separate elections. It may be a good idea in the past especially for Sabah, which used to be a battle ground. But now there is no more battle.

The PAS-led Kelantan and Terengganu have also said that they might consider a snap poll.

Yes, we are ready. Tell them if they want to (have a separate state election), we are ready to conduct the polls.

When do you think the election will be ?

I don't know. I think it will be soon. Next year probably. But in any event, we are ready.

ABDUL RASHID ABDUL RAHMAN was interviewed at his Putrajaya office on Sept 4 by malaysiakini journalists Arfa'eza A Aziz, Nash Rahman, James Wong, Francis Siah and Steven Gan.