Bar Council calls on Election Commission to allow legal representation to redelineation objecters

PETALING JAYA: The Bar Council has called on the Election Commission (EC) to allow legal representation to those who have objected to its recently proposed redelineation exercise.
Its president Steven Thiru said that the Bar Council took the view that legal representation during the enquiry process must be allowed as of right under Article 8 of the Federal Constitution which guarantees equality and equal protection of the law against discrimination as a fundamental right accorded to all persons.
"The enquiry process is an important one and the public has a constitutional right to be given an opportunity to be heard.
"We also note that political parties from both sides of the divide have expressed serious concerns regarding the proposals, and that the EC has received an astounding 836 representation objections to the delimitation exercise.
"It is therefore crucial that the EC permits legal representation," he said in a press statement issued, today.
In addition Steven also called on the EC to uphold the principle of "one person, one vote, one value" in its redelineation exercise.
Stating that this is a universally accepted practice and constitutionally required, Steven said that it can be achieved by ensuring approximately equal number of voters in each constituency.
He said that while Paragraph 2(c) of the Thirteenth Schedule was inserted in 1973 to allow acceptable departure from the said principle due to the state of economic development then and large disparities between urban and rural constituencies, the scenario today cannot be repeated.
"The only acceptable departure from this principle is with regard 'to the greater difficulty of reaching electors in the country districts and the other disadvantages facing rural constituencies', where 'a measure of weightage for area ought to be given to such constituencies.
"This is a safeguard against the willy-nilly manipulation of boundaries of constituencies," he said.
Meanwhile, the Selangor government has filed for a judicial review to quash a notice and a draft constituencies' plan for the state which contains the proposed recommendations for delimitation of constituencies by the Election Commission.
It is seeking to quash the draft and notice published under Section 4 of the thirteenth schedule to the Federal Constitution titled "proposed recommendation for Federal and State constituencies in the states of Malaya," as reviewed by EC, dated Sept 15, 2016.
It wants an order to direct the EC to publish a fresh notice and fresh "proposed recommendations", which must comply with the "thirteenth schedule to the Federal Constitution."
It wants the High Court to compel the EC to use the current electoral roll, the supplementary electoral roll certified on July 20, this year, and to take into account 136,272 voters in Selangor, whereby no addresses are stated.
It claims the notice and draft is lacking in detailed particulars, such as ordinary voter, local authority or state government.
Therefore, the applicant wants sufficient particulars in order that ordinary voter, local authority or state government would be able to exercise their constitutional right.