malaysiakini has this story entitled "Shock reversal: Indelible ink plan erased". (all articles are free for a week)
So the Elections Commission has retracted its decision to use the indelible ink as a means to prevent problems during the elections.
This "marking ink" method is already used in other countries and one can only wonder why the following problems were not settled before Parliament was dissolved:
1.Amending the election rules to require the marking with black ink. Seeing that the government controlled more than 90% of the seats, the bill would have taken perhaps 20 minutes to pass as this ink was also favoured by the opposition to reduce fraud.
2.Why did the Law Ministry not provide any proper opinion on the legal complications?
The basic problem why this simple ink problem cannot be countered is that there is no proper caretaker government in place that will decide on such problems. All the past leaders are too busy trying to get another round of their lucrative positions.
After all the government has total control on the main stream media that it could have easily come out with public advice on the potential cheats.
Messages could have been broadcast on radio, tv, Astro, sms, newspapers on the procedure. The reason to scrap is not quite convincing and opens the old "double-voting" dilemma.
On balance I think the number of duped voters with a marked finger would have been easy to double check on the roll compared to a "multiple voter" who is invisible in the suspect electoral rolls. But of course if the person has been sanctioned by the EC to vote in a few places, checking that roll in one place will not reduce the fraud.
The basic issue that needs to be answered is "Are there still phantom voters in the electoral rolls?"
I suggest this latest black spot on the BN Government should be the last we endure with the 2/3 majority.
Since the latest inquiry on the Lingam tapes shows how the Judiciary can be tainted, I believe that there are probably many other black spots in the Elections Commission.
photo: thanks to http://www.dick-blick.com/items/211/26/21126-group0ww-xs.jpg
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