Bersih 2.0 acting chairman Shahrul Aman Mohd Saari, who made the call, said if the EC commissioners refused to resign, the process to remove them must be immediately initiated.
“Without their removal, there will be difficulties in carrying out institutional reforms,” he told the press today at the presentation of the preliminary findings on GE14 compiled by Bersih and Pemantau.
Shahrul said the removal of the EC commissioners was crucial based on the misconduct found by Bersih and Pemantau coordinators on polling day.
“The 14th general election (GE14) was rife with corruption, fraud and malpractice. Election laws were ignored or enforced in an arbitrary and often biased manner.
“The EC failed to command public confidence in managing the electoral process and system, and ruined the integrity of GE14,” he added.
The findings by the Bersih 2.0 committee members and Pemantau included unconstitutional redrawing of election boundaries, failure to clean up the electoral roll and prevent phantom voters, arbitrary disqualification and prevention of nominations of candidates, failure to act on election offences (such as rampant vote buying, treating and corruption) and failure to reform the postal and advance voting system.
Among the highest number of complaints Bersih 2.0 received on EC misconduct concerned wrong labelling of ballot boxes for parliament and state seats (62), refusal to properly cross out names on the electoral roll (37), impersonation and phantom voters (36), ballot papers issued without the official EC stamp or serial numbers (28) and ballot papers without markings (23).
“One of the offences that delayed the final election results from being announced by EC was that counting agents at some locations were refused copies of Form 14 by the head of the polling stations.
“This is an offence under Section 4 (a) of the Election Offences Act.
“In many instances, the forms were handed over only after pressure from counting agents. However, there were reports from Selangor, Perak, Johor and Sabah that counting agents were unable to get their copies of this form,” said Shahrul.
Shahrul, in expressing concern over the severity of the electoral offences, said that all EC commissioners and EC officers must be charged with contraventions of the law done before, during and after polling.
“Special task forces must be set up within the police and Attorney-General’s Chambers to ensure this is accomplished.
“We also called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the electoral system to pave the way for reforms.
“Bersih 2.0 will be issuing a comprehensive report on the GE14 in the coming weeks.
“The report on GE14 will add to the many existing reports, proposals and memoranda awaiting implementation by the EC and the government of the day,” he said.