KOTA KINABALU: The Election Commission (EC) today gave the assurance that the next general election would be the best and not the dirtiest as some people perceived it would be in view of the disclosures at the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on illegal immigrants in Sabah.
Its chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, said the people should not come to conclusions based on the testimony of one or two witnesses as more than 100 people were giving statements to the RCI.
“What I want to stress here is that our electoral rolls are clean. The EC has been cleaning the list every day with the National Registration Department (NRD). NRD is the authority which decides whether a person is a citizen or not.
“As such, our electoral rolls, with 13.3 million voters (including Sabah) as at December last year, are clean. The 13th general election may be hot, maybe challenging, but not dirty,” he told reporters after handing over letters appointing three non-governmental organisations (NGO) as observers in the next general election for Sabah and Labuan.
The three NGOs are the Sabah-branch of the Malaysian Historical Society, the Sabah Youth Council and the Sabah Federation of Chinese Associations.
Abdul Aziz said the EC had introduced several changes to update and improve the election process, including the use of the indelible ink, early voting, media access for political parties, international observers and local observers.
“Many other changes have been made, including allowing postal voting for Malaysians residing overseas,” he said.
He said four EC officers would be called as witnesses in the RCI hearing.
Abdul Aziz also said that the EC would spend about RM52 million to manage the general election in Sabah, which has 969,497 registered voters.
He said the EC was allocating RM400 million to manage the general election nationwide.
Earlier, in his speech, he said 16 NGOs had been appointed as local observers throughout the country, with five in the peninsula, eight in Sarawak and three in Sabah. –Bernama