Election Commission is BN's 14th party, says MP
The Election Commission's (EC) continuous ignoring of complaints about its constituency redelineation exercise has raised the ire of concerned parties, including PKR's Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar, who described the EC as a BN component party.
Nurul Izzah is vexed with the EC for insisting on holding public inquiries into an unprecedented 64 objections to its redelineation exercise, despite an ongoing judicial review against the commission's conduct.
The Election Commission's (EC) continuous ignoring of complaints about its constituency redelineation exercise has raised the ire of concerned parties, including PKR's Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar, who described the EC as a BN component party.
Nurul Izzah is vexed with the EC for insisting on holding public inquiries into an unprecedented 64 objections to its redelineation exercise, despite an ongoing judicial review against the commission's conduct.
"The ongoing public inquiry process by the EC in Sarawak ignores the judicial process and justifies the EC's title as the 14th component party of BN," she said in a statement today.
Nurul Izzah said the EC should wait for the outcome of the application for judicial review before the High Court in Kuching for the commission's proposed redelineation to be declared null and void for allegedly not complying with constitutional provisions in the exercise.
"More so as the EC's credibility has been severely affected, which forced Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to create a parliamentary select committee on electoral reform in 2013.
"Unfortunately, the reform failed to be executed to date," she said.
Among problems in the redelineation exercise, Nurul Izzah said, is the EC's failure to publish in its notice the complete list of localities of the proposed redelineation, as it did in 2005.
Furthermore, she said, the EC's attempt to move polling districts from one parliamentary seat to another also contravened Section 7 of the Elections Act 1958.
She added the EC's stubbornness in not heeding concerns justifies the Electoral Integrity Projects 2014 , which scored Malaysia as having the worst electoral boundary in the world.
The project, jointly conducted by the University of Havard and University of Sydney, gave the country an overall rank of 114 out of 127 nations for electoral integrity.
"The EC chairperson should immediately disclose all essential information in the redelineation process, including the standard operating procedure it used ,or be stuck forever with the title of BN's 14th component party," Nurul Izzah added.
