If we were to listen to and believe the opposition parties' objections in Opposition in a flap on election law changes, warns of an Asian Zimbabwe (April 8), our democracy is a 'half-dead' one by which the ruling coalition won some elections by phantom voters and that the present move to amend the election law by Election (Amendment) Bill 2002 is to give this massive electoral scam a decent burial so that its incidence whether past or future may not haunt the victors by judicial review to annul an election

It however need not have to be viewed that negatively.

It is true that according to Justice Muhammad Kamil Awang (case of Harris Mohd Salleh v Ismail bin Majin, Returning Officer) "it is public knowledge that there has been a large number of illegal immigrants present in Sabah for quite some years, and that there are numerous cases of illegal immigrants who have been registered in the electoral roll as voters using fake identity cards or identity cards illegally obtained".

(One may assume that identity cards illegally obtained would include "temporary identity cards" issued by some district chiefs/authorities in contravention of our National Registration Act.)

This problem raised by the opposition of "phantom voters" — by expression of which is meant a voter who finds his way into the electoral roll by fake identity cards or identity card obtained illegally — takes on greater urgency for address when it is recollected that Peninsular Malaysia as well is rampant with illegal Indonesian, Filipino and Burmese illegal immigrants, and one does not know how many of these found or will find themselves into electoral rolls.

We know that only citizens are eligible to vote. However, if showing of the identity card is not a proof enough of citizenship for eligibility to be registered as a voter in the electoral roll, what is? Surely one does not expect the election officer or commission to examine the identity cards and enquire the legitimacy of their derivation. The administrative burden of such a task is horrendous.

The only way is to establish clear criteria of what constitutes citizenship for purposes of registration in the future. Maybe besides the identity card, one has to show the birth certificate or citizenship papers to corroborate!

Malaysians should forget about the past because what has been done improperly cannot be undone. We should look to the future. This is because if the electoral roll of past elections or by-elections is re-opened for review, this may result in many elections and by-elections being annulled, and with it, the acts and policies all elected officials being overturned and declared illegal to the detriment of the public that have since structured their affairs in reliance on these acts and policies.

This is then the logic of the present government in seeking to amend election laws to place the finality of electoral roll beyond judicial review. There must be closure and finality of electoral results and the electoral roll.

If courts are resorted to by every aggrieved party to review every election and by-election result that goes against him or his party — and court cases will take years to conclude — governance and parliamentary system will come to a standstill.

That is precisely why up to a certain point Americans too believe that the closely-fought election between Bush and Gore in Florida should not proceed further by legal process in an endless cycle of appeals without finality with a vacuum subsisting in the leadership position. The trick is in building in safeguards against electoral abuse and fraud before and not after election.

It is no point for the opposition to field their candidates to contest and allege rightly or wrongly after losing that they lost because of phantoms voters and electoral rigging by the ruling coalition. Why does one participate in and not boycott such an election in the first place to lend it legitimacy? it may be asked.

One of the key amendments pushed through by a 64 to 19 majority is (on this issue of finality) that "the gazetted electoral roll will be deemed as final and cannot be challenged in court as to its authoritativeness, exhaustiveness or correctness".

This is fine provided that before the electoral roll is gazetted, some safeguards are built in to mitigate possibilities of electoral abuse. As stated, in any update and drawing up the electoral roll, the Election Commission should verify not only identity cards (the issuance of which has been impugned by many quarters as improper) but check them against the birth certificates and citizenship papers.

Copies of these must be taken by the Election Commission and furnished along with the provisional electoral roll drawn up to all candidates and parties contesting the seat. They are then to be given a time period of (say) one month to conduct with the help of the addresses stated in these papers a random survey and visits of their own of prospective voters to verify that the copies of the papers (upon which citizenship is determined by the Election Commission) indeed belong to them.

Another time frame should be given for any dissatisfied party to lodge with the commission his objections to the inclusion of certain persons in the electoral list. In such a case there should be a mandatory enquiry by the returning officer to hear the objections and the objections to these objections.

If it cannot be resolved or if the returning officer's decision is unsatisfactory to any party, the one aggrieved should have the recourse to appeal to an independent tribunal consisting of experts on citizenship and electoral laws whose decision — again in the interest of finality and closure and in order for the election or by-election not to be postponed indefinitely — ought to be deemed final and binding in the courts of law. The advantage of such a tribunal is that it can conduct hearing more expeditiously than our courts with their backlog!

Only after all these procedures have been carried through can the Election Commission cause the electoral roll to be gazetted. And of course after gazetting, the gazetted electoral roll will be deemed as final and cannot be challenged in court as provided by the amendment.The suggested procedures may not eliminate altogether the problem but will go to some extent to mitigate the issue of credibility and acceptability of the electoral roll.

It is quite true that these additional procedures to mitigate electoral irregularities may burden the Election Commission with more paperwork and administrative staffing.

This is where the ruling coalition's increase of the 'range' of election deposits with 'ceiling' at RM20,000 become relevant and should be supported rather than opposed by the opposition!

Increasing the deposit is justified not only because, as minister in the Prime Ministers Department Dr Rais Yatim said, it is necessary to prevent any "Tom, Dick and Harry" from being put up to try his or her luck. If a person intending to purchase a Proton Saga can put up RM20,000 as deposit, it is ridiculous that somebody who aspires to be a wakil rakyat or his party cannot.

The more important reason is election deposits are customarily to help finance the administrative machinery needed to be in place in an election to ensure proper accounting in terms of validity checking of the nomination/registration to deter potential electoral mistakes or fraud.

This means that if election deposits are increased, the Election Commission has more resources to undertake (and no more excuse not to) more paperwork and administrative responsibilities to ensure an electoral roll is clean and satisfactory to all contending parties before gazetting it.

Indeed, all parties and the public have the right to demand and expect from the electoral registrar and commission a higher duty of care to ensure that there is proper and transparent accounting as far as the drawing up of the electoral roll is concerned now that the election deposits are raised to give them additional funding! From this angle, the increase in election deposits is justifiable in my view.