MIC targeting one million Indian voters

KUALA LUMPUR: The MIC will ensure that at least one million Indian voters can vote in the 13th general election, said its president S Samy Vellu.

He said out of one million Indians who were eligible to vote, 840,000 had already registered with the Election Commission (EC).

"MIC will work at registering 100,000 more Indians, who are among 500,000 party members identified as having not registered as voters, by the end of October.

"The party will also ensure that 60,000 more eligible Indians will register as voters with the EC before this November.

"I believe that if we (MIC) can secure the support of Indian voters before others could do so, Indians will be the second biggest group of supporters for Barisan Nasional (BN) in the next general election," he said after opening a seminar on registration of new voters for heads of MIC divisions, here, today.

Samy Vellu said based on the political parties' lists of new voters registered between January and June this year, Umno and DAP had each registered more than 50,000 new voters, while MIC had only registered 1,109 in the same period.

"This shows there are weaknesses in the leadership at the branch and higher levels," he said, adding that MIC would launch a nationwide voter registration drive and urged the EC to appoint more assistant registrars from among MIC division, branch, Wanita and Youth leaders.

He was confident that based on the current political scenario, Indian voters would play a crucial role in the next general election.

"I stand by the opinion that the Indians generally strongly support BN and the leadership of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak.

"The prime minister continues to communicate with the Indian community in the effort to gain more support for BN.

"If BN is weak, the MIC will also lose its strength and the channel to bring forward the problems faced by the Indian community to be resolved."

Therefore, Samy Vellu said, MIC needed to carry out transformation at the divisional and branch levels to face the current political challenges.

"Soon, there will be a leadership transformation at the top, a new leader will take over but it does not mean that I am sleeping until that time.

"The new leader must know the challenges in the party," he said.

- Bernama