Commission should begin drawing up strategy and improve administrative work: Junaidi

KUCHING: The Election Commission (EC) has been urged to begin tracking down and registering eligible Sarawakians right away in time for the next state election.

WAN JUNAIDI: Update electoral roll right away.

Deputy Speaker of Parliament Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jafaar said that the EC should begin drawing up a strategy now not only to register voters but also to improve their administrative work like monitoring the movement of voters and updating the electoral role.

“They cannot scramble to do all of this in just a few months before the election. Now is timely because the parliamentary election has just been completed while the state election for Sarawak is edging closer,” he told reporters after launching the ‘Cari Mayang Sayang’ programme at SIPEC here yesterday.

Junaidi, who is the Member of Parliament for Santubong, said that he would be meeting with the State EC office early next year to improve the voting process in his constituency.

He disclosed that based on the statistics for the year 2000, Santubong’s population was 120,000 but surprisingly only 32,000 were registered voters.

He said the EC needed to find out why this was happening and also the number of mixed voters in the area.

“During the past campaign, some of them living in the Santubong area were voters from Petra Jaya and there were some from other places as well,” he pointed out.

Then there was also, according to him, the problem of registering a voter based on the address stated on his or her identity card.

He pointed out that a person who once lived in Petra Jaya and now has made Lundu his home for many years already would only add to the population of Lundu but not a voter there.

This could be happening in Santubong and a disadvantage to the constituency because such voters were not likely to return to cast their votes on polling day because of distance and cost, said Junaidi.