KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 15 — Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek admitted today that MCA was slow to sign up voters because party leaders were distracted by “internal problems”.

The MCA president told reporters today that the party will step up its efforts to register more Chinese voters, with another leader saying the target was 50,000. There are some four million Malaysians who have to sign up as voters.

“We admit that this issue was not given serious attention by MCA. I think the MCA leaders were too busy having internal problems,” he said today after meeting party divisional leaders.

Dr Chua said the party will overcome its problems through training.

“There will be internal training to increase morale and the fighting spirit so there will be loyalty, oneness and an increase of their love for the party,” he announced.

He explained that it will be done level by level in every division and that there will be members appointed at the national level to keep track of its findings.

Dr Chua said the goal is to register as many new voters as possible.

“We still have almost 200,000 MCA members not registered as voters,” he pointed out.

Although he did not specify a number, MCA Youth Chief Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong tweeted that the target for new voters registration would be 50,000 by the end of the year.

There are only 11 million voters registered out of a population of about 27 million people in the country with the Election Commission (EC) estimating another four million are eligible but have not

registered.

EC data showed that last year alone, Umno registered the highest number of new voters at 24,818, followed by DAP with 17,756 and PAS with 16,987.

As this gathers momentum, some political parties have doubled their endeavours such as PAS, which has set to get 500,000 new voters registered under the EC’s year-round registration programme.

The DAP, on the other hand, is targeting about a 10 per cent increase in the number of voters in every constituency by carrying out registration exercises even at night markets and shopping complexes.