REFORM of the Election Commission may take up to three years, said the institutional reform committee, which held its first meeting today.

Committee member Ambiga Sreenevasan said it would make recommendations to the government to reform the EC in 60 days, adding however that the process of cleaning up the electoral roll may take “two to three years”.

Other issues that the committee will look into include the issue of rural-urban weightage of voters.

Present at today’s meeting were retired Court of Appeal judges K.C. Vohrah and Mah Weng Kwai, National Patriots Association president brig gen (rtd) Mohamed Arshad Raji and Tunku Abdul Rahman Professor of Law at Universiti Malaya Shad Saleem Faruqi.

Some 15% of voters (2,123,973 voters) in the electoral roll have incomplete or no addresses, said electoral reform watchdog Bersih 2.0.

The group charged that more than 500,000 voters were deliberately and illegally transferred to marginal constituencies to sway the results, leading to an abnormally high number of voters with similar or non-existent addresses being registered.

“There’s a lot that needs to be done with the EC. Legislation is one thing, but I imagine one of the first things you need to look into is to clean up the electoral roll,” said Ambiga.

“And, that is a process that would take two to three years. So, we can make recommendations for that. There’s quite a lot to look at.”

Shad said reforming the EC does not require the votes of two-thirds of lawmakers.

“The constitution is quite clear that constituencies must be approximately equal in size, subject to weightage.

“The question is, how much rural weightage. I think that doesn’t require a constitutional amendment.”

Ambiga added: “That’s why we are looking at checks and balances, because that will ensure that every institution remains independent, no matter who is in power.” – May 16, 2018.