ELECTORAL watchdog Bersih 2.0 urged voters to wear yellow as a sign of protest against the Election Commission’s “10 serious crimes”.

In its preliminary findings report released today, acting Bersih chairman Shahrul Aman Mohd Saari said the EC had failed to command public confidence in its management of the electoral process and system

He named EC chairman Mohd Hashim Abdullah and six other senior officials as having “committed 10 serious crimes against voters in Malaysia, and in doing so, had ruined the integrity of GE14.”

The 10 crimes are gerrymandering, malapportionment and abuse of the re-delineation process; failure to clean up the electoral roll and prevent phantom voters; failure to register eligible voters; setting polling day on a Wednesday; setting the bare minimum campaign period of 11 days;  arbitrary disqualification and prevention of nominations; failure to take action against electoral offences; making arbitrary and unreasonable election regulations; irregularities in advance and postal voting; and failure to allow meaningful election observation.

Shahrul, in a press conference today, said voters had an an important role to play in the prevention of of such offences.

“Electoral fraud and manipulation can only be overcome if you and all Malaysians turn up to vote as we all have done in 2008 and 2013.”

“As a sign of protest and solidarity, Bersih 2.0 also encourages all Malaysians to wear yellow, tie yellow ribbons, paint your Facebook yellow two days before polling day, on May 7 and 8,” he said at the Bersih 2.0 office in Petaling Jaya today.

Last week, Bersih said highlight “major irregularities” that affected hundreds of thousands of Malaysian voters.

These include more than half a million cases of voters registered under the same address, and two million registered without an address.

Bersih also found cases of dead voters registered, including a voter whose birth year was 1897.

In today’s report, Bersih said the EC had abused the redelineation process by worsening malapportionment through the creation of super-sized constituencies, by packing together opposition supporters, violating the “one person one vote” principle.

Bersih concluded partisan gerrymandering and malapportionment would “unfairly swing approximately 15 parliamentary constituencies in favour of Barisan Nasional.” – May 6, 2018.