Certified or re-certified electoral roll shall be deemed to be Final 9A.

After an electoral roll has been certified or re-certified, as the case may be, and notice of the certification or re-certification has been published in the Gazette as prescribed by regulations made under this Act, the electoral roll shall be deemed to be final and binding and shall not be questioned or appealed against in, or reviewed, quashed or set aside by, any court.
www.mansuhkan9A.com

Abolish 9A campaign launched

Anisah Shukry | July 18, 2013

Online campaign by Bersih and Pakatan is to pressure the government to allow the electoral roll to be scrutinised by the courts

KUALA LUMPUR: Pakatan Rakyat with the support of Bersih chairperson, S Ambiga, have launched a campaign to pressure the government to allow the Court to scrutinise the dirty electoral roll. Previous efforts to file a court case compelling the Election Commission (EC) to clean up the electoral roll were rebuffed on the grounds that it violates Section 9A of the Elections Act 1958. Section 9A states: After an electoral roll has been certified (and) published in the gazette the electoral roll shall be deemed to be final and binding and shall not be questioned or appealed against in, or reviewed, quashed or set aside by any court.

This means that once an electoral roll is gazetted, it cannot be challenged in court, DAP leader Charles Santiago said today at a joint press conference with Ambiga, Gelang Patah MP Lim Kit Siang, and DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng at the Parliament lobby. Today, my office and I will be launching the Mansuhkan 9A (Abolish 9A) campaign. This campaign aims to gather public support for the abolishment of Section 9A of the Election Act 1958, said the Klang MP. The problem we have with 9A is that the EC is the sole custodian of the electoral roll, said Ambiga, adding that if the EC wanted transparency, it would not need Section 9A to protect the electoral roll from court scrutiny. Santiago said Section 9A remained a key obstacle to a free and fair election because it prevented anyone from questioning the integrity of the electoral roll, despite evidence. He claimed that Section 9A was introduced to help BN maintain its phantom voters, citing as proof the fact that it was introduced only after the 2001 Likas by-election case. The Kota Kinabalu High Court had found the Likas constituency electoral roll to be flawed, as it contains phantom voters, and hence declared the 1999 constituency polls null and void, he said. He urged the public to unite and exert pressure on the government by signing the Mansuhkan 9A campaign petition, accessible at www.mansuhkan9A.com. We want the government to repeal Section 9A immediately and return the power to the judiciary. Anything short of an abolishment will further degrade the legitimacy of the Barisan Nasional government, said Santiago.

Electoral rolls clean-up campaign goes online

B Y JE NN IF ER G OMEZ JU LY 18, 201 3 L AT EST U PD AT E: J UL Y 18, 2013 02 :40 PM

The electoral rolls cannot be challenged in a court of law and, as such, three opposition MPs are calling for a section of the Elections Act 1958 to be abolished with their 'Mansuhkan 9A' online petition launched today at Parliament. Section 9A stipulates that the rolls cannot be challenged in court once it is gazetted and that, opposition MPs say, is an obstacle to free and fair elections. DAP Klang MP Charles Santiago said it was clear that the section was introduced to enable Barisan Nasional to protect its phantom voters syndicate, saying that he found no other logical reason for the unconstitutional and undemocratic provision.

"We call on the government to repeal Section 9A immediately and return the power to the judiciary. Anything short of this will further degrade the legitimacy of the BN government," he said. The two other MPs responsible for the online petition are Sepang MP Mohamed Hanipa Maidin and Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah. The petition is accessible at www.mansuhkan9A.com Bersih co-chair Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, who was present at the launch, said that the EC was the sole custodian and guardian of the electoral rolls. "This means that whenever we try to raise any issue in relation to the electoral rolls, the EC can give us an unsatisfactory answer and we are stuck with that, we cannot take it to court," she explained. Ambiga added that the most critical issue now was that the EC will be using the current electoral rolls for the re-delineation process which is expected to take place later this year. "We have asked for the electoral rolls to be cleaned up, and the EC's answer is that they are doing it, but we have no way of checking how they are doing it and no way of satisfying ourselves that the electoral rolls to be used in the re-delineation process is clean," she added. July 18, 2013.