Arul Prakkash urges concerned Malaysians to get involved in Jom Pantau to monitor the upcoming election.
Jom Pantau is an election monitoring project for the coming 13th general election. It is the official platform of Bersih 2.0 to monitor any irregular and fraudulent practices in the election.
Our guiding principles are based on the Election Offences Act 1954 and the eight demands of Bersih 2.0 for clean, free and fair elections. Jom Pantau is carried out in cooperation with Bersih 2.0, the Malaysian Election Observers Network (Meo-Net) and the Southeast Asian Centre for e-Media (Seacem).
All the findings of this election monitoring will be compiled and presented to the public. So far, we have already received up to 1875 reports, presently being processed and categorised. These reports are mainly centred on alleged irregularities in the electoral rolls and other forms of irregular practices described in the Election Offences act 1954. As of now, 194 reports have already been classified by our team and have been uploaded onto the online website (www.pru13.info).
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This special dedicated website also contains a summarised version of the Election Offences Act 1954 for ordinary members of the public to understand their rights as voters. (Please click on to “Pusat Sumber” at pru13.info). These offences will help the general public to determine what is considered election offences and malpractices, before, during and after polling day.
The public, including ordinary citizens, can submit their reports via email, twitter, sms and facebook. Where online media is not easily accessible, reports can be made via telephone, fax or in person at the different monitoring points.
Jom Pantau will check all the reports received and whether it comes with evidence to support such as photos, videos, documents etc. We will verify the authenticity of the report and upload it to the Jom Pantau website and submit it to relevant agencies to take further action. We expect that these reports will be seriously looked into by the Election Commission and other relevant authorities because civil society organisations like Komas do not have the necessary resources, access and capacity to verify the alleged reported offences on the ground. After all, this is the sworn duty and mandate of the Election Commission.
To date, the reports received by Jom Pantau have revealed the following:
- 84 checked online (http://www.spr.gov.my/) reports of people with same old IC numbers but registered with different names.
- 38 checked online (http://www.spr.gov.my/) reports of voters having the same name and date of birth.
- Regular voter status was changed to “Pengundi tidak hadir” without their knowledge even though they are not qualified to be postal voters.
- Not a registered voter but appeared in electoral rolls on 9 May 2012. The complainant reported that she found her name registered within Butterworth but upon checking again the following day the SPR record showed that it had been changed to Klang constituency.
Jom Pantau has already organised two training workshops for election monitoring agents and observers. To date 171 members of the public from different parts of Malaysia have signed up to be trained and to act as election monitors for the coming election.
Komas has been involved in election monitoring and documentation; and voter education work since the 1990s and has organised many human rights workshops, video screenings and the production of human rights education resource materials such as videos, comic books, posters, cartoons and pamphlets. Check it out at http://komas.org/voters-rights.html.
We urge concerned Malaysians to get involved in Jom Pantau to monitor the upcoming election. We also need financial resources to carry out this effort because Jom Pantau is dependent on public contributions to make it work.
We strongly urge all Malaysian regardless of your political leaning to help ensure the coming election is free, fair and clean. We must make sure that the duly elected government of this country is truly mandated by the people through a genuinely democratic process and not through fraudulent means.
Arul Prakkash of Pusat Komas is coordinator of the Citizenship and Voter Education Programme. Arul is also a steering committee member of Bersih 2.0, which fully supports the Jom Pantau initiative.
How to report:
Website: www.pru13.info
E-mail: [email protected]
SMS: 013-7711071
Tel/direct call: 03-2282 4105
Twitter to follow and mention: @jom_pantau
to report: #jom_pantau
Facebook:www.facebook.com/JomPantau
AGENDA RAKYAT - Lima perkara utama
- Tegakkan maruah serta kualiti kehidupan rakyat
- Galakkan pembangunan saksama, lestari serta tangani krisis alam sekitar
- Raikan kerencaman dan keterangkuman
- Selamatkan demokrasi dan angkatkan keluhuran undang-undang
- Lawan rasuah dan kronisme
