KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 — Lowering the voting age to 18 is both a risk and an opportunity for Malaysia that Pakatan Harapan (PH) will have to take, DAP veteran leader Lim Kit Siang said today.

The Iskandar Puteri MP observed that younger voters are generally seen as pro-Opposition — which now comprises Barisan Nasional, PAS and their like-minded allies.

However, he said the ruling PH stands to gain if it embraces and conquers the “great challenge”.

“It is generally held that lowering the voting age to 18 will be beneficial to the Opposition and detrimental to the government of the day, and this was why the Malaysian Constitution was never amended to provide for such an empowerment of the youths in the past six decades.

“But the Pakatan Harapan government will demonstrate that it will act in the best interests of the country although it might to be detrimental to the interests of the Pakatan Harapan coalition, and Pakatan Harapan will rise to the challenge to make itself the coalition of choice of the young voters when the voting age is lowered to 18 years,” he said in a statement.

Lim described the government’s tabling yesterday of a Bill to amend the Federal Constitution for a lower voting age as “historic”, saying he felt vindicated as he proposed this 48 years ago.

Lim said he had, in his first year in Parliament in 1971, proposed for the voting age to be lowered from 21 years of age to 18, as well as automatic voting registration and compulsory voting.

Back in 1971, countries which already allowed 18-year-old citizens to vote included the United Kingdom, Turkey, Poland, Canada and Germany, he said.

He listed multiple countries that have switched their voting age from 21 years old to 18 years old since his 1971 parliamentary speech, including the Netherlands, US, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Philippines, Australia, France, New Zealand, Italy, Trinidad and Tobago, Denmark, Spain, Peru, Belgium, India, Switzerland, Austria, Estonia, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

“Since my suggestion for the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971, the majority of the countries in the world have adopted this electoral reform but Malaysia seemed to be frozen in time as far as democratic, parliamentary and electoral reforms are concerned,” he said.

Lim noted that Malaysia and Singapore are currently the only two countries in the Asean region that have voting ages of 21, highlighting that the voting age in Indonesia is 17, while the voting age for Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar is 18.

Lim, however, said youths aged 18 should be given the right to have a say about the way in which their lives are governed and the country is being run.

“Thanks to the historic 14th general election on May 9, 2018, Malaysia is poised to return to the international mainstream for democratic and electoral reforms,” he said when reflecting on expected major changes such as the bid to lower the voting age.

IPOH, July 5 — PAS president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang today proposed letting candidates qualify for election once they hit 18 years old instead of 21, after the government tabled a Bill to lower the voting age.

“If a person can vote at 18, then I don’t see any wrong why he can’t be a candidate at the same age,” he said in a video interview with the Terengganukini news portal aired on his Facebook page.

The Opposition federal lawmaker came up with the idea in response to the Bill tabled in Parliament yesterday by Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman at the Dewan Rakyat to lower the voting age to 18.

At the moment, election eligibility is open to Malaysian citizens aged 21 and above.

They must also be of sound mind, not a bankrupt, and not be a salaried employee nor hold citizenship elsewhere or have pledged allegiance to any other country.

The person also should not have been sentenced to jail for no less than one year or fined no less than RM2,000 without having obtained a pardon.

Hadi added that the Opposition bloc is in favour of automatic voter registration for Malaysians once they reach 18.

In the interview, he explained that automatic registration was necessary because young Malaysians are “careless” even if they are mentally mature.

“When we ask them to register to vote, they tend to be careless. So by doing this, the responsibility to vote can be strengthened,” he added.

The Marang MP said the Opposition will support the government’s Bill to lower the voting age if its suggestion for automatic voter registration is included.

The Bill requires amending the Federal Constitution, and that needs two-thirds votes from MPs — which the ruling Pakatan Harapan coalition does not currently have — in order to be passed.

Hadi acknowledged that many countries have enabled their 18-year-old citizens to vote on the belief that they are mature mentally.

“By right youngsters who reach 18 should be mature in this current generation, but if not, then I think the problem is with our education system,” he said, without elaborating.

Hadi said his Islamist party will submit its own Bill on dropping the age for election candidates and the automatic registration soon, but did not specify a time.

“We will wait for the result of the Bill to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 first,” he said.

“But at the same time, we are also willing to discuss if the government wants to make the amendments in the current Bill to include what we suggested. It can be done as the Bill tabled in Dewan Rakyat only went through the first reading,” he added.

PUTRAJAYA: Penerbit filem Hollywood, Riza Aziz dilaporkan ditahan di ibu pejabat Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia di sini, petang ini.

Sumber berkata, anak Rosmah Mansor itu akan didakwa sebagai pemilik Red Granite Pictures atas 5 pertuduhan menerima wang haram dari Good Star Ltd, sebuah syarikat dikaitkan dedngan ahli perniagaan, Low Taek Jho.

Beliau dijangka didakwa di Mahkamah Sesyen Kuala Lumpur esok.

Berita lanjut menyusul.

LOS ANGELES: A gown worn to the 1974 Academy Awards and more than 1,200 other items from the life of late actress Elizabeth Taylor will be offered for sale at an auction in early December, Julien’s Auctions announced on Wednesday.

The pale blue chiffon dress that Taylor wore to the Oscars, which was designed by Edith Head, is expected to fetch between US$4,000 and US$6,000, the auction house said in a statement.

Also on offer will be a gold-plated, sterling silver Cartier belt that Taylor had inscribed to her mother. Darren Julien, president and chief executive of Julien’s Auctions, said he expected the belt to sell for more than US$40,000.

The auction will take place Dec. 6-8 in Beverly Hills, California. Bids also can be placed through the auction house’s website.

Other clothing for sale will include a green wool felt cape the actress wore to Buckingham Palace in 1970 and a New York Yankees jacket she donned for a Vogue Paris photoshoot.

The auction also will feature jewellery, wigs, fine art and household items from Taylor’s life. Julien said he also expected to offer artwork that would sell for as high as the $60,000-range.

Taylor, who died in 2011 at the age of 79, epitomized Hollywood glamour from its golden age with her love of diamonds, violet eyes and a tumultuous love life that included eight marriages – two of them to Welsh actor Richard Burton.

In a career spanning seven decades, the British-American Taylor first gained fame in 1944’s “National Velvet” at age 12 and was nominated for five Oscars. She won the best actress Oscar for 1960’s “Butterfield 8,” and 1966’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

KUALA LUMPUR, July 4 — Datuk Liew Vui Keong said the government is developing a mechanism that will transfer the appointments of high-ranking public officers from the prime minister’s hands into those of members of Parliament.

The minister in the Prime Minister’s Department told the Dewan Rakyat during Question Time that he consulted the groups involved and will refine the mechanism to decentralise power from the executive to the legislative.

“This is an ongoing process. I have met stakeholders including the Parliamentary Select Committee on Major Public Appointments William Leong, the speaker and the prime minister.

“We are discussing to create a mechanism on the appointment of major public service officers. Each service is unique in its requirements for their positions and we need to fine tune the mechanism so they can appoint the best,” Liew said.

Pakatan Harapan backbencher Wong Chen had earlier asked the government on its stance and the timeline of transfer of power to appoint the top positions in the civil service, after the appointment of lawyer and former PKR politician Latheefa Koya as the chief of the Malaysia Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

The Subang MP reminded the Dewan Rakyat that this was one of the promises made in the PH election manifesto.

In his supplementary question, Wong also asked Liew on the Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQT) and whether or not it will be implemented.

Liew then backtracked on his original statement last week and said PMQT will be implemented in the next sitting in October.

“The prime minister has stated his interest to answer questions. For the record, last year the prime minister has often appeared in the lower House to reply to questions,” said Liew.

KUALA LUMPUR, July 4 – Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail defended the country’s civil service today against the latest World Bank economic monitor report stating that it has a large wage bill but has been stagnating since 2014.

The deputy prime minister said the report unfairly merged the uniformed service with government servants, noting that it assessed this combined civil service as having low accountability, impartiality, transparency and openness.

“I was just asking the civil service, what constitutes the civil service? This is because our civil service includes uniformed people as well.

“So I think if you take out, I think our civil service population is not that bad. So, in comparatively I don’t think that it’s fair to say that they are not doing well,” she told reporters after officiating the 18th Civil Service Conference at the National Institute of Public Administration (Intan) today.

Dr Wan Azizah said the unfair merger of the two services had resulted in the perception of a lack of efficiency, but added that this might be derived from large number of civil servants.

Before the DPM, Chief Secretary to the Government Datuk Ismail Bakar said several initiatives to improve public services such as institutional reforms and public sector reforms had already been launched to improve civil service efficacy.

The Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services President Datuk Azih Muda also criticised the World Bank report, saying the public sector has been working hard to ease in the new Pakatan Harapan coalition after it won the May 2018 elections.