THERE was an eight-fold increase in the number of new voters registered in the third quarter of last year, and the number grew five times in the final quarter, compared with the corresponding period the year before last.

“The increase during the first quarter of 2017 was also five times,” said Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad today.

The Amanah communications director said in a press conference that Pakatan Harapan hoped to discuss the surge in voter registrations with Election Commission chairman Mohd Hashim Abdullah.

According to Khalid, the average increase in new voters each quarter since 2013 was 70,000.

He said the opposition have found it difficult to register new voters since they were stopped by the EC from doing so.

“But now, the number of new voters have gone up eight and five times. Who is registering them?” said Khalid.

“Where do these new voters come from? When we were registering voters, the average increase was only 70,000 (per quarter).”

Meanwhile, PKR strategy director Sim Tze Tzin said the EC had imposed too many new restrictions on the opposition after GE13.

“We used to be a be able to help the EC register new voters and there was healthy competition between the political parties to register voters.

“But now, only the EC officers are permitted to do that. The voter registration forms are hard to get hold of,” said the Bayan Baru MP.

Sim said the EC would only give out 20 forms each time they asked, while they could easily secure about 100 new voter registrations in an evening’s work at the night market .

Tian Chua, R Sivarasa, and Kamaruddin Jaafar of PKR and Teresa Kok of DAP were also present at the press conference. – May 17, 2017.