Electoral roll grows in Mingalar Taung Nyunt

THE number of eligible voters in Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt township has risen by almost 40,000 since parties were given the chance to amend voter lists, candidates said last week.

The election commission gave parties until March 24 to apply to make corrections to voter lists and while this has resulted in some names being removed from the roles, such as deceased people, it has resulted in new voters being added.

U Kaung Myint Htut of the Myanmar National Congress said he initially believed there were only 95,000 eligible voters in the township but the latest lists from the commission showed about 130,000.

“There are two kinds of additional names – one is internationally created by some people, others are migrant workers from other areas of the country,” he said. “This is a weakness of the Ministry of Immigration – they don’t have proper data on family registration.”

U Kaung Myint Htut said he hadn’t applied to add or remove names from voter lists. However, he said prominent Union Solidarity and Development Party members, including U Htay Oo, had complained to the commission in early March that in many constituencies migrant workers had been left off the electoral roll.

U Phone Myint from the New National Democracy Party confirmed that the number of voters in Mingalar Taung Nyunt had risen from about 95,000 when the lists were first announced to 133,089 on March 28.

“We have just been encouraging residents to inform us if they are not on the lists,” he said. “I don’t think there will be fraud related to this rise in the number of voters.”

The campaign manager for National League for Democracy candidate Daw Phyu Phyu Thin said the party’s members had “found many additional voters” by going door to door through the township.

“The commission told us to submit these lists of extra voters before March 24 but we have found even more since then and can’t do anything,” the campaign manager said. “There are also some people who are not living in this township but are still on the lists so we are checking them closely.”