Pemantau pilihan raya zombie di dalam pilihan raya umum Malaysia (Zombie election monitors in the Malaysia general elections)

Norazam Mohd Noor, Muhamad Takiyuddin Ismail, Muhamad Nadzri Mohamed Noor

Abstract


Konotasi bersih dan adil adalah ideal sesebuah pilihan raya yang demokratik. Ia antara lain, menggarisbawahi sejauh mana legitimasi sesebuah kerajaan yang dipilih melalui pilihan raya. Selain dari parti politik, organisasi-organisasi pemantauan pilihan raya memainkan peranan penting dalam memerhati, mengukur dan menilai perjalanan sesebuah pilihan raya. Namun, kajian terhadap organisasi-organisasi ini sangat kurang mendapat tempat. Kebanyakan tulisan ilmiah yang menyentuh organisasi-organisasi ini bersifat kurang terfokus dan hanya melibatkan pemerihalan sampingan, khasnya di dalam korpus ilmu sains politik di Malaysia. Artikel ini, untuk itu, secara amnya diasaskan untuk menganalisis sifat, fungsi dan operasi organisasi-organisasi pemantauan pilihan raya domestik di Malaysia. Manakala, secara khusus, artikel ini cuba membangkitkan kes kewujudan pemantau pilihan raya zombie di dalam Pilihan Raya Umum 2013 dan 2018. Berdasarkan kajian ke atas tiga organisasi pemantauan zombie di dalam kedua-dua pilihan raya itu, artikel ini menghujahkan organisasi pemantauan zombie telah di rekayasa secara kreatif oleh parti pemerintah untuk mengabsahkan pilihan raya, sekali gus memberi legitimasi kepada pemerintah meskipun terdapat pelbagai manipulasi autoritarian di dalam pilihan raya itu. Hal ini adalah sesuatu yang tidak dapat dielakkan bagi sesebuah negara yang mempunyai sistem politik hibrid yang tinggi, di mana pilihan raya masih perlu dilakukan bagi memperbaharui legitimasi pemerintahan. Kebanyakan hujahan dan analisis di dalam artikel diperoleh melalui temu bual dengan aktor-aktor penting, pemerhatian langsung dan kajian kepustakaan.

Kata Kunci: organisasi pemantauan pilihan raya domestik (DEMOs), pemantau pilihan raya zombie, Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya, Pilihan Raya Umum Malaysia 2013, Pilihan Raya Umum Malaysia 2018, masyarakat sivil

Free and fair are the ideals of a democratic election. These ideals underscore the idea on how much an elected government can be construed as a legitimate ruling body. Election monitoring organisations, apart from political parties, have played significant roles in observing, measuring and assessing electoral procedures and processes. Nevertheless, academic research on these organisations often overlooked and thus very limited. Most of the electoral studies frequently reflected the organisations in a passing mention, rather than providing a focused and detailed examination, particularly in the Malaysian political science corpus. This article, therefore, intends to fill this lacuna by providing an analysis over the nature, functions and operation of domestic election monitoring organisations in Malaysia. More specifically, this article explores the existence of zombie electoral monitor organisations in the 2013 and the 2018 General Elections. Based on the studies of three selected electoral watch organisations, this article argues that zombie electoral monitors were cunningly engineered by the then ruling party to invoke the idea of lawfulness in its electoral process, and thus providing legitimacy to the government although there were many discrepancies and authoritarian manipulation along the process. This was rather inevitable to a state of hybrid political system, such as Malaysia, whereby elections are still needed to renew legitimacy to its political elites. Most of the arguments made in this article are based on a qualitative research, namely by doing interviews with the relevant actors, direct observations and library studies.

Keywords:      domestic election monitoring organisations (DEMOs), zombie election monitors, Election Commission, 13th General Election of Malaysia, 14th General Election of Malaysia, civil society


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References


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