KUALA LUMPUR, June 26: The House of Representatives will become the latest field for Pakatan Rakyat (PR) to champion the cleansing of the election process so that the upcoming 14th General Election (GE-14) will not be tainted with fraud and discrepancies as recorded in the recent GE-13.
This is following the 34 petitions filed by PR to challenge the results of the GE-13 and a series of Black505 people’s assemblies which received great response throughout the country.
PR Members of Parliament will continue to urge for the leaders of the Election Commission (EC) to resign and their successors will be chosen and agreed upon by all parliamentary members, from PR and Umno-BN.
PR will also ensure that the re-delimitation for all parliamentary and constituency areas are carried out transparently to ensure that the principle of ‘one elector, one vote’ is implemented.
The Petaling Jaya Utara Parliamentarian, Tony Pua said that among the main matters if to urge for the current EC leaders who managed the GE-13 to be replaced by new faces.
Tony said that only with a new leadership in the EC, can the division of seats in the re-delimitation be carried out fairly.
“We know although PR is the opposition in Parliament, but we acquired 51 percent of votes compared to Umno-BN which only received only 47 percent of votes.
Pakatan and NGOs such as Bersih and SAMM claim that the GE-13 which took place on May 5 was laden with incidents of fraud and breach of EC rules.
Problems such as the presence of foreign nationals who were given identification cards to vote, restrictions against Pakatan agents to control the early voting ballot boxes, the amount of ballot papers which was not consistent and corruption by candidates or agents during the campaign period.
The EC also allegedly failed to implement its own policy to use indelible ink.
Shah Alam Member of Parliament, Khalid Samad in turn said that the problem of the election system has been raised before by Pakatan and the civil society even before the GE-13, however, it was not heeded by the Umno-BN Federal Government.
“As long as the EC is not seen as independent, (there would be) no reform in its role and it will not be placed under Parliament thus, it will continue to be disputed.
Batu Parliamentarian, Tian Chua was of the opinion that Pakatan will ensure that there will be no lacunae in future elections.
