Give airtime to candidates and parties to campaign, says Maria Chin

PETALING JAYA: All Melaka state election candidates should be allowed daily prime and off-prime air time on all TV and radio stations, Petaling Jaya MP Maria Chin Abdullah (pix) said today.

“These should include but are not limited to, announcement of their manifestos, debates among candidates and aired online dialogues with voters,” she said in a statement today.

“Allow candidates to advertise their campaigns and election manifesto for free on all TVs and radio stations.”

She also asked for candidates to be allowed to use mobile vans to announce their manifestos and their campaign messages to voters.

“Allow voters to change their voting status to mail-in votes or postal votes. This can be done at their nearest post office or online.

“Set the SOPs during polling day so that voters have more confidence to come out to vote,” she added.

Maria Chin said there are serious consequences in the announcement made by Health Minister Khariy Jamaluddin on the total ban gathering as the outreach to the voters is severely curbed.

“Insufficient time is given to candidates to set up their alternative outreach to their voters,” she said.

“Voters are disenfranchised if they do not know who are their candidates. Only candidates who are savvier to ‘digital marketing’ may reach their voters which is an unfair advantage during these unprecedented times. There was also no mention of candidates’ or political parties’ access to the media and air time to profess their manifesto.”

She pointed out that the call for state elections at Melaka has been ill-thought out and it clearly showed a lack of thinking through of the consequences of calling for an election.

“When the then Chief Minister (Datuk Seri) Sulaiman Md Ali gave the letter to the Yang di-Pertua Negeri Tun Dr Mohd Ali Rustam to dissolve the state assembly, there was no proper discussion to mitigate the consequences of dealing with Covid-19,” she said.

“While it may be the right and legal approach but more thought could have been given to consider the possible spread of the virus and hence more effective SOPs could have been planned before the dissolution of the state assembly.

“As a result, the Minister of Health Khairy Jamaluddin came up with limited SOPs which only covers pre- and campaign periods but neglected to give a comprehensive strategy on how to conduct the elections and voting with the least exposure to the virus, if that is what he is so concerned with.”

Maria Chin said Khairy’s immediate reaction was only to announce the curbing of political gatherings, house-to-house campaigns, and a blanket ban on all “activities of gatherings or social gatherings”.

“But what about when people gather at the polling stations? What are the measures made to ensure social distancing is observed? What are the alternative measures to reduce voters coming to the polling station and yet being able to vote?

“Is the Minister of Health going to tell us that his role and responsibilities stop outside the polling station and the rest is up to the Election Commission? Incomplete announcements usually tend to result in confusing follow-up instructions.

“One can only deduce that the Minister is making a political decision, i.e., to end all political campaigns, rather than a wholistic and rationale SOPs for the elections, be it state or national. Is this present government so afraid of people reaching out to the Melaka voters? Or they are in fact afraid of the voters? Or is this a plan to reduce and frustrate voters’ turnout?”