Roland, who is head of Baram PKR, said electoral reform for rural voters in Sabah and Sarawak was one of the main demands of Bersih group.
“We still have the issue of no identity cards for most of the people like the Penan and Orang Ulu in the rural areas. So when they don’t have identity cards, they will not be registered as voters,” he told the media today.
In a parliamentary reply in April, cabinet minister Azalina Othman had said there could be as many as 553,233 people eligible to vote but not registered.
Roland, who is a lawyer based in Miri, said the drive to register rural voters was woeful and that the Post Office was the only government agency tasked to address the issue of unregistered voters.
“Their offices are situated in the town areas and you can imagine how hard it is for these people to come down just to register as voters.
“They have to travel great distances and for that reason they would not be participating in the democratic process of this country,” Roland said.
Another issue affecting rural voters is the lack of infrastructure during the voting process.
“Not all kampungs have the ballot box. Sometimes ten villages share one ballot box. So because of poor infrastructure, these people are forced to travel, most of the time, on their own through the jungle. They end up not exercising their democratic right to vote.”
“As part of Bersih, we demand that the Election Commission provide ample coverage in Sarawak to ensure that every citizen of Malaysia is registered as a voter so they would be able to exercise their rights,” he added.
Bersih, a coalition of societies and organisations, is campaigning for clean elections, clean government, the strengthening of parliamentary democracy and the right to dissent.
Bersih has called for reforms to ensure absentee voting rights for all Malaysians, including Sabahans and Sarawakians who live, work or study outside their own states.
The group has also called for freer media, decentralisation to enhance Sabahans’ and Sarawakians’ control on how their states should be run and the eradication of vote-buying as well as abuse of government powers and apparatus in the upcoming federal and (Sabah) state elections
In a statement in September, Bersih said the recent Sarawak state election in May was preceded by “unjustified seat increase, excessive malapportionment and gerrymandering” which was “rigged with rampant vote-buying”.
The group warned that Sabah may face unfair constituency re-delineation after the Sabah Legislative Assembly approved two Bills to increase state seats from the current 60 to 73.