updated version

The eighth Sarawak state election will be held on Sept 27, nine days after the nomination day on Sept 18, the Election Commission announced today.

EC chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman told a press conference in Putrajaya that there are 868,487 eligible voters for the 62 state seats this year, an increase of 54,140 from 814,347 voters in the 1996 election.

The electoral roll was last updated at the end of last month. Of all the eligible voters, 17,736 are voting by post. The announcement followed the dissolution of the Sarawak state assembly yesterday.

Abdul Rashid added that he would write to the state government to declare the polling day as a public holiday as more than 1,000 schools would be used as polling centres.

Asked if the election will be haunted by phantom voters, he said the EC has taken various measures to ensure that there were no illegal immigrants on the electoral roll.

"There will be no phantom voters on this roll... it has been cleaned up. We are confident that the roll we proposed is one that is free from elements that have been mentioned before," Abdul Rashid added.

The controversy over phantom voters in elections drew public attention in recent months following a landmark court judgment in June that declared the Likas electoral roll in Sabah invalid on the ground that it had been tainted with the presence of phantom voters.

Most of the phantom voters were said to be illegal immigrants from the Philippines and Indonesia.

A by-election subsequently held in late July saw a landslide victory for incumbent Yong Teck Lee from Barisan Nasional, who was convicted of election offences earlier.

Smooth and fair

Abdul Rashid said the EC would not seek help from the National Registration Department (NRD) to verify the identity of the voters, unlike in the Likas by-election.

"Maybe we will only ask the NRD to help us examine the authenticity of the voters in a few suspicious areas," he said.

During the Likas by-election, Abdul Rashid was quoted as saying that if a person gives sufficient indication of his or her Malaysian citizenship through the documents supplied by the NRD, then the EC would act accordingly to list him or her on the electoral roll.

He said the EC expected the coming Sarawak state election to be a smooth and fair one like "how it has been in the previous years".

He also denied that the eight days given for campaigning were insufficient.

"In fact, the election campaign had already started a long time ago and we are merely making it official now," the EC chairperson quipped in jest.

In 1996, the Sarawak Barisan Nasional won 58 state seats, 19 uncontested, while the remaining four went to opposition and independent candidates.

The coming election is going to cost RM22.2 million and involve more than 14,000 personnel who are mostly teachers. Half of the cost is allocated for transportation, such as the use of 39 helicopters to transfer election personnel and balloting boxes in remote areas.