KUALA LUMPUR, March 27 — The RM62.8 million that the federal government is asking Parliament to approve for the Election Commission's (EC) spending is not for the voting regulator's ongoing redelineation exercise, Finance Minister II Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani said today.
Johari said that the sum was instead for three elections last year.
"The supplementary expenditure of RM62.8 million is not to be used for the redelineation process, but was used fully for three elections — Sarawak's state election (RM60 million), the by-election for P067 Kuala Kangsar (RM1.82 million) and by-election for P093 Sungai Besar (RM1.4 million)," he said in Parliament today.
"As a comparison, if we see the 2011 Sarawak elections… the expenditure used in 2011 is RM79 million. For the 2016 election, the total used… is RM85.4 million," he said.
Johari was winding-up the debates at the policy stage for the Supplementary Supply (2016) Bill 2017, which sought for Parliament to approve an additional RM3.08 billion to supplement the government's Budget 2016.
The amount included an item of RM62,780,000 for the EC.
