Malaysian election watchdog Mafrel chief Abd Malek Hussin is in Sarawak to make final preparations on the ground amid signals that the state elections will be called next month.

Malek told malaysiakini that his visit to Kuching and later to Sibu and Miri is also to gauge the state of prepardedness of the various organisations involved in the election process, including the Election Commission (EC), police and political parties.

He said he met with state EC head Noordin Che Ngah yesterday morning and was informed that the commission was ready for the elections..

Malek said he was also told that the latest electoral rolls were gazetted on March 31 and would be used in the coming elections.

It is widely speculated that the Yang di-Pertuan Negeri will dissolve the state legislative assembly on April 22, nomination will be on May 5 and polling on May 13.

Many volunteers

The Mafrel chief said he was pleasantly surprised at the good response to the call for volunteers to be election observers. For the purpose of election monitoring work, Sarawak will be divided into three zones - Kuching, Sibu and Miri - to cover a total of 71 state constituencies, an increase of nine from the previous state elections in 2001.

The local observers will be joined by foreign ones from several countries, including the United States, he added.

Mafrel or Malaysians for Free and Fair Elections was set up as an election watchdog in 2003. Malek is the chairperson and executive director. He has 27 years of experience in election observation work both inside and outside Malaysia since 1978.

Malek told malaysiakini that Mafrel will also be involved in verifying the electoral rolls to ascertain the authenticity of registered voters. There are about 900,000 registered voters in Sarawak out of a population of 2.2 million.

In its recent report, Mafrel has urged the EC to format the electoral rolls to include the full address of every elector's permanent address in order to establish and maintain accuracy.

It added that political parties must demonstrate commitment to denounce systematic unethical inclusion and exclusion of voters in any electoral constituency.