Friday, October 26, 2007

Temporary Assistant Registrars from political parties are only allowed to register new voters

Mr Johnny Soon Kwai Choon and his wife, Teh Saw Theng were voters in Subang Jaya before 2006. Both of them are moving to Mutiara Damansara in 2006 and have the addresses on their MyKad changed to their current address. They were misled by MCA Voters Registration Team that they could apply to change their voting address.

Both of them applied to change the voting address to Mutiara Damansara on 28th October 2006 with a MCA booth in 1-Utama Shopping Complex, Bandar Utama. This was a booth set up by MCA with which their Temporary Assistant Registrars (Penolong Pendaftar Sementara - PPS) who are appointed by SPR would be able to register new voters.

In fact, all political parties nationwide are invited to send representatives to assist SPR in registering new voters after having gone through some training. For example, each political party are allowed to send maximum 22 representatives to become SPR PPS as there are only 22 parliamentary constituencies in Selangor.

The power of the registrar is somehow limited as they can only register new voters but not those who are already voters but apply to change their voting address. This has been made clear to all PPSs. Citizens should be asked to identify themselves of whether they had registered or not before Temporary Assistant Registrar from political parties can register them. Any citizen who applied to change their voting address can only do that in Post Offices and SPR offices, after updating their addresses on their ICs.

However, Mr Johnny Soon and his wife were not informed about this and the MCA PPS named Tiew Lea Kiong went ahead to register them in their new address. They are never informed about their status until they recently discovered that they are still voters in Kelana Jaya.

Mr Johnny Soon later went to DAP office and met me, only to know about all these regulations. A check on Mr Johnny Soon’s carbon copy shows that his form is not properly filled in. For example, the second portion of the form which should be completed by the PPS is not completed. Certainly his form will be deemed as incomplete and could be rejected even if the PPS is empowered to change Mr Johnny Soon’s voting address.

We would like to inform voters who registered with any PPS to check their carbon copies carefully before leaving the counter. As an added service to our voters, DAP PPS in Selangor used to stamp a reminder at the back of the carbon copy to remind people to check their registration status on time. Contact details of DAP PPS in Selangor are also printed clearly on the forms to enable people to contact us if they have any problem related to their registration.

Again what is required to register as voters are for the citizen to appear before the PPS and show them your original Mykad. If you are required to provide more information than required, please inform the SPR and lodge a complaint as the PPS may abuse your documents to enroll you as members of their political party as observed in Cheras recently.

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