People queuing up to register as voters

The first voters’ registration campaign initiated by DAP started off at Tm Sri Sinar on 8:30am sharp as Election Commission Malaysia personnel were ready and people were waiting. The public response to this campaign was simply too overwhelming! Despite some light rains, the turn out increased by the minutes until 1pm when we have to call it off because it was already half an hour beyond time. At one time, we even ran out of forms but luckily one officer had supply in his car. Some 600 people came and we managed to have close to 400 new voters registered. Many were turned away because they haven’t had their IC address changed.

The very basic ingredient of democracy is voting and yet, more than 5 million Malaysians who are eligible to register as voters are not registered. Why? There are a variety of reasons. Some are very nonchalant about voting as they think this is politic. The other main reason is the whole voters’ registration process is full of hassle. One simple and 100% works solution to this is the government must let any Malaysian automatically becomes an eligible voter when he or she attains 21 years old. Easy does it.

Lim Lip Eng