EC’s press conference raised some unanswered issues

Giving postal votes to Sarawakians in West Malaysia is a `new' issue which EC has not considered.

EC held a press conference today at Pullman hotel to announce the dates for the coming Sarawak State Elections. Nomination is on Apr 6th while polling on 16th. The issues arising were: EC claim that it has not look into the issue of giving postal votes to Sarawakians living in West Malaysia-though they has taken the trouble to give the wife of police the discretionary right to cast postal votes. The question is: why?

The EC also pushed away its responsibility on vote buying-pushed it to the MACC, on abuses of civil servants in party campaign-claiming that the issue need to be decided by court. The EC also tried to play for time on the issue of appointing an observer group led by a party leader, by promising to question the observer group on Mar 29th.Earlier it has failed to explain why it only want to accredit 1 group-thus exposing itself to problems when the only group cause problems.

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1st scandal of Sarawak state election: observer led by a party leader given EC accreditation!

The EC has announced the nomination of the Sarawak State Elections on Apr 6th and the polling day on Apr 16th. The 10 day campaign continue the tradition of EC to keep campaigning period to the minimum, while legally the EC can allow up to 60 days for campaigning. The longest ever allowed was 45 days in the 60’s. Anyway the Sarawak state election was tainted from the word `go’, as the EC chair Tan Sri Abdul Aziz announced the accredited election observer at the same press conference at Pullman Hotel at around 12.00noon today. The officially and solely accredited election observer group is Mafrel who had previously been denied accreditation due to its incapacity to produce observation reports on a continuous basis. It is not known why the EC suddenly allowed the accreditation-but the issue of Mafrel being led by a women leader of a well known political party, who has probably hopped to a new party by now,  does not seems to bother the EC who insist that they only allow neutral, non-partisan observers! After the EC chairman was questioned at the press conference he promised to scrutinise Mafrel at a meeting on Mar 29th.

But the implication of the EC accrediting an observer group led by a political leader could truly be mind boggling! It goes against the norms in most countries if not the whole concept of election observation.

Now some facts about the political leader:

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