Malaysia would be practising a questionable democracy if phantom voters were allowed to cast their ballots and "get off scot-free", said Aliran today.

The human rights organisation slammed the proposed amendments to the Elections Act 1958, which include the provision that electoral rolls are unchallengeable in the courts once they have been gazetted.

"No doubt this amendment follows what took place in Sabah recently. The BN [Barisan Nasional] win in Likas was challenged and subsequently, it was declared null and void, as the judge found that there were phantom voters on the electoral roll," said secretary of Aliran, Dr Francis Loh.

In a press statement today, Loh said the Election Commission (EC) had failed to ensure that the Likas electoral rolls was clean.

"But the court later found out that the rolls were in fact polluted with phantoms," he added.

He also accused the EC of having lost its independence since being made answerable to Parliament, which is dominated by the ruling BN coalition.

"Only recently, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamed promised that Putrajaya would soon have its own member of parliament ... while Johor Umno leaders boasted that there would be additional seats up for contest," said Loh.

"Yet under the law, it is only the EC that can determine how the electoral boundaries are to be redrawn and the number of additional seats created, not the prime minister and certainly not Johor Umno."

Implications

Loh also highlighted the implications of a second amendment governing the amount of compensation liable to be paid for any objection made to a person's name on the electoral roll deemed to be "without reasonable cause".

The proposed amount will be RM1,000, up from the current RM200.

"Because of this new amendment, eliminating a particular phantom voter or a suspected phantom voter will not only entail tedious work, but could also potentially cost a lot of money.

"[In effect], you will be punishing someone for trying to eliminate phantom voters," said Loh.

The third "insidious" amendment referred to was the sharp increase in deposit required of contesting candidates from RM5,000 to RM20,000.

Loh said the increase is clearly intended to burden and inconvenience the poorer opposition parties while the new sum would be "a drop in the bucket" for the BN components.

He called on BN to stop "indulging in the politics of exclusion and denial", and for EC to concentrate its efforts more on issues such as providing fair access to the media and allowing for open-air rallies.

"We must prevent this last remaining democratic institution — warts and all — from falling into the hands of the executive [BN government]," he said.