by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Wednesday, July .14, 1993:
All eligible voters should register .as voters which begins tomorrow as it will be the last voters’ registration exercise before the next general elections
All eligible voters who are Malaysians who have reached 21 years should register as voters which begins tomorrow as it will be the last voters’ registration exercise before the next general elections which is expected to be held next year.
The voters registration exercise will be for 42 days ending on August 25.
It is most unfortunate that the Election Commission has not introduced the year-round voters’ registration for its voters’ registration exercise is one of the biggest blemish in the Malaysian electoral system.
In every general elections, the DAP found that, large numbers of young Malaysians who support the DAP could not cast their votes on polling day because they had not registered as voters and had therefore lost the right to vote. This is the result of the highly defective voters’ registration system which seems to discourage eligible voters in the urban areas because of the inconvenience involved.
I call on all Malaysians who have not. registered as voters not to allow the inconvenience to deter them from registering as voters, as otherwise, it would mean that the defective voters5 registration system has succeeded in inducing substantial numbers of Malaysians to surrender their political rights represented by their vote to help determine their own future and that of their children and children’s children.
Malaysians should make a point from July 15 to August 25 not only to ensure that they had registered as a voter, but to ask their friends, workmates and neighbours whether they had registered as voters so that there is a nation-wide voters’ consciousness campaign on the importance of registering as voter during the current registration exercise so that they could vote in the next general elections.