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Friday, 19 March 2010

Reaching out to the unregistered voters

Coming back from Malacca yesterday, the car broke down.

Had to be towed back to KL.

I sat in the cabin of the tow truck and chatted with the operator, Eric.

Aged 30.

Came round to the question whether he had registered to vote.

He said “No”.

Asked him if he was happy with the BN goverment.

Again, no.

Did he not want to see a change of government and an improvement in governance, I asked.

“Yes”, he said, and asked how he should go about it.

I explained.

He promised to get himself and his wife to the post office to register.

I also got him to promise to pass the word to his friends.

This afternoon, at the workshop where the car had been towed to, I found out that at least three of the foremen there were not registered.

I am popping into the workshop tomorrow to do some additional repairs and to settle my bill.

I’ve told the foremen that I will only settle my bill after they have all hopped into the car after the repairs have been done, and we’ll take the car for a test drive to the nearest post office and after they have all registered as voters.

The Election Commission reports that the number of eligible but as yet unregistered voters now stands at 5 million.

The EC is in no hurry to register them.

We all know why.

We have to get to those 5 million.

A couple of weeks ago, at the Rumah Anak Bangsa Malaysia, I got a pledge from several people who were there for a documentary screening to make 10 phone calls daily to people they know theck if they are registered and to get them to pledge to also make 10 calls daily.

I’ve been doing this for some time now and you’d be surprised at the number of people whom you know and who are always complaining about this and that and yet, are not registered.

Give this a try, will you, please.

And if you thought that voter reigstration and education was a boring affair, think again.

A young group of energised Malaysians are working to make this a fun-thing.

For news on this, click the poster below.


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