DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang is unconvinced that the Election Offences Amendment Bill 2002 which Parliament started debating yesterday will solve election abuses.

Describing it as "premature and irrelevant", Lim said the bill, first presented to Parliament in March, was drafted without any consultation with opposition parties.

"It was conceived with the primary objective to make life as difficult as possible for the opposition, but as comfortable as possible for the ruling party," he said in a statement.

"This was why the amendment bill failed completely to address the substantive electoral abuses which afflict the electoral system in the past few decades," he said, claiming they involve "abuse of money, media manipulation and government machinery exploitation (also known as 3M)".

The former Opposition Leader claimed the Election Commission (EC) not only closed its eyes to the 3M electoral abuses, but tried to give a certain legitimacy to money politics by raising up to four-fold the maximum election expenditure permissible for election candidates.

The amount for a parliamentary candidate was raised from RM50,000 to RM200,000 while the maximum for a state assembly candidate went from RM30,000 to RM100,000.

Lim questioned why the EC allowed such a big increase when RM100,000 had suffice for a parliamentary candidate and RM50,000 for state assembly candidate.

Expenditure limit

"It is a great blemish of the Election Offences (Amendment) Bill that there is no attempt to place a limit on the election expenditure which a political party or coalition is allowed to spend during a general election, as is the case with other countries such as the United Kingdom.

Lim claimed that it was also an open secret that BN candidates had spent hundreds of millions of ringgit in past general elections.

He urged the EC to propose in the bill that a political party or coalition could not spend more than RM10 million nationwide in any general election, failing which the leaders of the political party or political coalition were liable to prosecution and disqualification, if found guilty.

"But what makes the current parliamentary debate most unreal and irrelevant is the failure of the bill to address the issue of phantom voters, which the EC chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman had recently admitted," stressed Lim.

He said the EC was unmoved by the opposition party's complaints of phantom voters in the electoral roll over the last 20 years but was quick to spring into action when the ruling coalition protested.

"When Dr Mahathir Mohamad complained about PAS' [alleged] phantom voters in the recent Pendang and Anak Bukit by-elections, the EC swung into immediate action," he said.

Reputation

Lim said the EC actions have impaired its reputation and credibility as an independent, non-partisan and impartial body in discharging its constitutional mandate to conduct free, fair and clean elections.

Lim also said that it is ludicrous for Minister in Prime Minister's Department Dr Rais Yatim, to present 28 amendments to the Election Offences Act 1954 but failed to address the grave "phantom voters" problems.

He added that the bill should be referred to the parliamentary select committee to invite public views after the second reading.

"Rais can chair the parliamentary select committee on the Election Offences (Amendment) Bill 2002, which should comprise representatives from all political parties," Lim suggested.

He also called for the electoral roll to be cleaned up and a six-month amnesty period be given to all "imported phantom voters" for them to be properly registered in their respective constituencies.