Dr Kelvin Yii
KUCHING (Dec 4): In his emergency motion in the Parliament Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen had asked the federal government whether it is considering to impose a “short-term emergency again” on Sarawak to delay the election in view of the new threat of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
In a statement yesterday, he said he raised this question after Senior Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said in a statement that “efforts to transition to the endemic phase has been paused for a while as the government looks to find out more about the new Covid-19 variant”.
He pointed out that even Dr Lam Sai Kit from Academy of Science Malaysia has expressed his concern when he said “In Malaysia, the additional concern is the possible introduction of this variant into the country with the Sarawak Elections due next month..
“So before we fully understand the situation including the transmissibility, virulence and vaccine protection towards Omicron, it is maybe proper to be leaning on the conservative side and not introduce a possible unpredictable variable, such as a state-wide election which may run the risk to be a super-spreader event,” he said.
Dr Yii said that a temporary short-term emergency may be beneficial for two main reasons.
Firstly it is for the government to monitor the spread of Omicron more closely and to take additional precautionary actions and measures.
He noted that Malaysia is not doing enough genomic sequencing to be able to conclusively say or identify whether this new variant has not breached our country’s borders just yet.
“Based on data released, Malaysia’s genomic sequencing to detect the variant is abysmal. Malaysia has only sequenced 0.1 per cent of Covid-19 cases the past 2 weeks, or only 1 per 1,000 cases. This is in comparison to other countries such as Denmark that has sequence 50 per cent, or 1 per 2 cases, Sweden at 36.7 per cent, the UK at 16.1 per cent, Switzerland 11 per cent, Australia eight per cent and many others,” he said.
Dr Yii added that this is such a crucial metric to really have proper surveillance if any of the prevalence of such variant in the midst.
“Countries around the world are reporting on a daily basis new discovery of such variant and thus it is naïve to think it will not reach our shores, if it hasn’t already,” he said.
The other reason, Dr Yii said, is the announcement by the Election Commission Thursday on the gazettement of Undi18 on the December 15, which would not be applicable for the upcoming state election.
“It could be beneficial for the election to be instead held during a time where our young voters can participate and vote in the upcoming Sarawak state election.
“The GPS government has always said they do not fear the youth vote and said that this issue should not be politicised, but if they are truly sincere, they will take the extra step to make sure they are inclusive to them and not rush this election before the full implementation of Undi18,” he said.
All their claims on youth are mere rhetoric if they are deliberately depriving the youth of their fundamental right to vote, he added.
“We actually had the time as the declaration of Emergency in Sarawak was only supposed to end in February 2022. That will give us enough time to evaluate and monitor even the full impact of Covid-19 during the Melaka state election and the emergence of this new variant of concern before deciding on having an election of our own.
“This will also give time for the Election Commission to come up with innovative ways and reforms including absentee voting or postal voting for the upcoming state election,” he said.
Dr Yii insisted that he was in no way trying to prevent democracy or stopping the election.
“But in order for democracy to thrive by encouraging greater participation in the democratic process, the people need to feel safe to participate and that no one get deliberately left behind,” he said.
from Borneo Post Online https://bit.ly/3ommNbS
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment