On March 4, 2018, Maria Chin Abdullah tendered, to us her resignation as chair. After discussion, the Steering Committee accepted her resignation. Her last day in office was yesterday, March 5, 2018.
The short interval between her submission of resignation and her last day in office is due to her desire to announce, this week, her candidacy as a Member of Parliament in the 14th General Election (GE14).
BERSIH 2.0 thanks Maria for her contribution to the cause of free and fair elections over the last 10 years and her leadership since 2013. Despite harassment, threats against her and her family and detention under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (SOSMA) in 2015, Maria has remained resolute in carrying forward the agenda for institutional accountability and reform.
We express our best wishes to Maria in her foray into politics and we are delighted that she has said she will push, through legislation and policy changes, reform of the electoral system and of mature democracy. We hope all candidates and parties will make explicit commitments to do so.
Bersih 2.0, is a non-partisan movement focused on reforming the electoral system and promoting democratic values. Bersih will continue to operate as before, led by the Steering Team. The work previously done by Maria will be taken over by Deputy Chair, Shahrul Aman Mohd. Saari.
We take this opportunity to re-iterate our focus areas in the upcoming GE14:
1) Electoral practices and processes that are CLEAN and FAIR
2) A level-playing field for all candidates and political parties
3) Monitoring for electoral fraud and manipulations
4) Fair media coverage of political parties
5) Protecting the Right to Vote, and
6) Holding the Electoral Commission (EC) accountable.
We regret that we have yet to receive any response from the EC in regards to independent international electoral observers, unfair redrawing of electorate boundaries, cleaning up the electoral roll and abolishing postal voting.
Despite the numerous calls for reform, the EC continues to ignore BERSIH 2.0 and continues to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. We have repeatedly demonstrated how the EC uses the strategies of limiting and retaining dirt in the Electoral roll, Gerrymandering and malapportionment to determine before the elections who will win in each constituency. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that high voter turnout will defeat the EC’s blatant cheating.
Despite Maria’s departure, nothing changes at Bersih 2.0. BERSIH 2.0 will continue to champion clean and fair elections by wholly focusing on GE14, especially in regards to our campaign ‘SATUKAN TENAGA, KALAHKAN PENIPUAN’ – promoting institutional reform and the importance of coming out to vote, and our the PEMANTAU initiative (pemantau.org) which calls on citizens to act as independent election observers and report instances of electoral offences and fraud within their polling districts.
Issued by:
BERSIH 2.0 Steering Committee