Why EC don’t exercise discretion to allow postal voting for Sarawakians living out of home town?

At a forum on political financing held at Harbourview Hotel last saturday the EC was caught for only exercise discretion to allow the spouses of the police and the EC staff to utilise postal voting -but not Sarawakians living out of towns for various reasons. The disallowance is believed to have caused the voting rates in various Sarawak elections to lag seriously behind all other states especially in Penisular. From a political perspective the suppression of the voting rights of the mostly youthful and out-going Sarawakians imply that there is a hidden agenda to steer the voting pattern of Sarawak towards the conservative direction. To clear itself of political maneuvering the EC should exercise its discretionary power to include the out-of-town Sarawakian voters among the postal voters list.

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Pakatan governments’ contribution bring development to Sarawak where Taib never did

Pakatan ‘drives’ change into Penan turf

Joseph Tawie | March 21, 2011

Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim said Selangor is ‘willing to come to Sarawak’ to help bring change.

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Exclusive:PKR women protested against bible release conditions and presented more land grabs evidences

About 100 supporters turned up to the protest against the bible's conditional release and the presentation of more land grab evidences.

This morning witness the 2nd outing by PKR women to protest the conditional release of the 5000 Malay bibles and to present the 2nd batch of evidences on state government sponsored land grabs in Sarawak. There were still more police than the protestors this time-but there was also a visible swelling of the crowd on the part of the protestors this time around. Should the trend continue the protest may break the taboo against protest in Sarawak soon and allow more public discontent to be expressed through peaceful gatherings.

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Sarawak State Assembly dissolved today to avoid embarassing protest against 30th anniversary of Taib’s rule on Mar 28th?

The State Assembly Speaker officially announced the dissolution of the State Assembly today-and Election Commission will announce the time line of the election on Wednesday. The electoral roll to be used for this state election is updated to Dec 31st 2010 ie any new registration after that will not be able to vote. Compared to other elections the closing for registration is a bit early. However there are going to be 21 000 over election commission staff going on duty in 1740 over polling centres with 2561 over polling streams/classsrooms all over Sarawak, servising less than 1 mil (979 796)voters.

This is a collosal exercise costing RM45mil-which is 50% more than the last state election in 2006. Hope fully the higher budget will facilitate the EC to do a better job and provide better service to the voters. The RM45mil will be used to hire helicopters, 1000 over speed boats and thousands of 4-wheel drives to get the election results out in 1 day.

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