Leader supremo Muhyiddin Yassin and his government has made good its plan from earlier this month to get the Agong to declare a state of emergency in Batu Sapi. This is to avoid a by-election in the Sabah seat, at least for the time being so we can deal with our rising Covid-19 numbers.

To recap, the seat was declared vacant in early October after the death of its MP, Warisan’s V.K. Liew. However, the statewide Sabah polls on Sept 26, you know from the ill-advised coup attempt which has now seen both sides of the political divide behave like petulant children and point fingers, had led to a significant, deadlier spike in Covid infections, with Sabah feeling the worse of it.

If you remember, Moo and his band of merry Perikatan Nasional men had tried to get the King to declare a nationwide emergency towards the end of October. The feeling at the time, however, was this was a major overkill and critics accused le PM of trying to postpone Dewan Rakyat proceedings and stay in power (allegedly! allegedly!).

That plan was shot down by the Ruler who instead called on all politicos, to stop politicking for once and work together, what with Covid and Budget 2021 vote coming up.

This time, His Majesty made the darurat proclamation after briefings by prime minister Moo, health officials, the Election Commission (EC) and chief secretary to the gomen as to what’s in the best interest of the rakyat. 

With this, despite nomination day just four short days away, all preparations for the Dec 5 Batu Sapi polls must come to a halt, until further notice. The EC’s said it’ll set a new date for the polls.

Muhyiddin, in a televised address yesterday, once more admitted the third Covid wave occurred because of the Sabah elections (no shit Sherlock considering politicking by your own PN politicians was a major factor in this.) Yet it was cricket sounds as far as an official apology goes.

Apart from the obvious health threat an election would pose to the people, MooMoo also gave several reasons for wanting to push the state polls, namely:

•  Possible poor compliance would render any strict election SOP useless (we’re looking at you politicians too!)
   
• The EC was having trouble recruiting staff to work during the polls due to health fears. Essentially, they’ve only managed to find 143 peeps. They need 837 for Sabah.

What does this mean?
 

But what does this emergency mean for Batu Sapi folks anyway? Well, apart from no elections, nothing much will change. MooMoo has assured there’ll be no military rule, nor lockdown, in Batu Sapi. 

Sabah CM Hajiji Noor and other politicians from the state welcomed the news. One of these was Parti Warisan president and former CM Shafie Apdal, whose party held the Batu Sapi seat under Liew, though he cautioned the by-election must be held as soon as the pandemic was under control. One-track mind, this guy. 

While we give props for Muhyiddin and co. for learning from the Sabah polls, we are concerned that if not careful, this move could put us on a very slippery slope.

After all, this move would set the precedence for any upcoming elections, such as Gerik in Perak and Bugaya in Sabah, whose incumbents only recently passed away. Taking this further, Pejuang MP Mukhriz Mahathir yesterday mooted that the Federal Constitution be amended to allow for elections to be postponed until Covid-19 (or any other pandemic, we figure) is contained. 

But for how long? What happens should the powers that be decide to abuse this precedent, whether out of laziness or, worse still, political expediency? What about Sarawak state polls? Or worse, GE15?

One thing this episode has highlighted, though, is the fact our electoral system needs to be revamped. Many other countries, including our so-called frenemies down south Singapore and New Zealand, have held safe elections during Covid-19. In fact, dozens of countries have done it, and we could learn a thing or two from them. 

Systems such as e-voting or an improved, large-scale postal voting system need to be studied and implemented. The problem with the first idea is that it will take time to implement and the second, as EC deputy head honcho Azmi Sharom recently pointed out, there’s a huge trust deficit as far as voters are concerned. 

Naturally, there’s scepticism on the part of the public as Malaysia’s never been done before on a large scale. But let’s face it, a big reason for the trust deficit is due to all the politicking that goes on and the claims of ballot fraud.

There are other problems with postal voting as well. One of the reasons the Agong made the decision he did yesterday was that the EC’s data showed that nearly half of Batu Sapi voters have incomplete addresses, meaning that postal voting would’ve been difficult to implement. 

But, this can’t go on. Eventually, we will need to come up with either a new voting system or proper, honest, science-based SOPs. Covid-19 and its effects aren’t going away anytime soon. And what happens if another pandemic hits us in the future?

All it takes is political will and sincerity…the question is, do our leaders have it?