Simon Sipaun
PENAMPANG: Changing the government under the current ‘democratic system’ in the country had proven to be difficult, if not impossible, said former Suhakam vice chairman Tan Sri Simon Sipaun.
Commenting on the 13th General Election results which attracted protests from the opposition, he said despite proof of a tainted electoral roll, the Election Commission had not only refused to rectify the matter, but went on to implement unnecessary changes such as amending the Election Act to disallow election results to be challenged in any court once gazetted, and wanting to delineate parliamentary and state constituencies.
Quoting the 2001’s landmark case of Datuk Yong Teck Lee’s election as Likas state assemblyman in 1999 being ruled out as null and void by the then Sabah election judge, Justice Datuk Muhammad Kamil Awang, due to allegations of phantom voters, Sipaun pointed out there had been proof of such matters which the Election Commission should seriously rectify.
“If it had been proven in court that it (electoral roll) is tainted, why did it (Election Commission) not clean it up? Instead, the Election Act was amended to say that once the results are gazetted, they cannot be challenged in any court. This to me, it is an unfair law to say the least.
Based on these, Sipaun stressed that the change that Malaysians had yearned for, would be far-fetched unless the Election Commission takes proper steps to rectify the matter, which he said, is highly unlikely.
“I can only judge the EC by what it has done in the past and having said that, I cannot see it rectifying the electoral roll,” said Sipaun, when met at the launching of Centre for Renewable Energy and Appropriate Technology (CREATE), at Kampung Nampasan, here on Saturday.
On the issue of delineating the constituencies, he said that instead of lumping the urban areas and splitting the rural areas into smaller groups, the EC should implement a system whereby an elected representative represents a certain number of people in an area.
“For example, one state assemblyman represents say 5,000 to 18,000 voters and maybe one member of parliament for 15,000 to 100,000 voters in a constituency. There should be a certain number or percentage of people that an elected representative represents,” suggested Sipaun.
Sipaun also proposed an anti-hop law which would disallow an elected representative to jump-shift to another party upon being appointed.
“Under this law, if a representative hops, that rep would automatically lose his or her seat and only be allowed to re-contest either as an independent or under the ticket of the party that he just joined.
“Of course, some would say that this would be unconstitutional because you are denying his or her rights of association. Fair enough. But then you are weighing the right of that one representative against the rights of the thousands who trusted him or her in the first place. This should be taken into consideration as we can see that some political crises, like in the case of Perak, developed due to ‘hopping’ representatives,” he said.