[ Laman Ehwal Semasa ReformIS ]
Date: 27 Aug 1999
Time: 21:13:36
Remote User: -
Illusion of an 'independent' Election Commission By Kim Quek
On August 17, 1999, the Chairman of Election Commission, Omar Mohd Hashim declared that the Commission "has shown impartiality at all times", and assured the people that the "Commission would conduct the coming Election in a free, fair and independent manner".
The audacity of the Commission Chairman in making such claims of impartiality is stunning, being fresh from the Commission's humiliating failure to uphold election laws in the recent Sabah Election. In that Sabah debacle Barisan Nasional called "free and fair electionS", BN leaders made a mockery of democracy by totally disregarding our election laws.
Omar Hashim must have assumed Malaysians were either stupid or deaf and dumb. Or else, how could he expect Malaysians to be unaware of such open and widespread trampling of election laws in Sabah?
Decent minded Malaysians are still reeling from the revulsion of the unjust treatment meted out to the voters of Sabah by the BN. Sabahans had been subjected to threats, blackmail, fraud, corruption and brain-washing on such a Richter scale as to shake the very foundation of democratic constitution.
In addition, BN leaders had illegally made full use of the Federal and State Government resources to work for a BN victory. This was done through deploying practically all top Federal and State Government leaders and hundreds of Government employees and utilising extensive Government facilities including television and radio stations, aircraft, vehicles and boats for BN's sustained election campaign. All these manpower, travelling expenses and facilities were paid for by the taxpayers. In short, the extent and nature of these breaches of laws by BN are unsurpassed in any other democracy.
What has the Election Commission done against such glaring violation of our Constitution and laws? Nothing!
In case Omar still wants to defend his claim of impartiality, we invite him to explain the phenomenon that the Malay majority constituencies in Sabah had suddenly increased from 14 to 24 out of the total of 48 within the short period of 5 years. We contend that this dramatic rise in Malay-dominated constituencies came about through a combination of factors: the massive infusion of voters from illegal Philippino and Indonesian immigrants and the cunning re-delineation of electoral boundaries to maximise the number of Muslim dominated constituencies. We further challenge Omar to accept an independent enquiry into this phenomenon, if he defers from our contention.
If Omar is serious in his assurance to the people that "the Commission would conduct the coming elections in a free, fair and independent manner", he should now comment on the Prime Minister's recent spate of monetary allurement dished out to Government and quasi-Government employees including pensioners on this election eve.
One recalls the ridiculous explanation given by the Prime Minister recently on why the Government decided to grant the increase of monthly allowances of up to RM 2,000 plus to 5 statutory bodies including the EPF at this particular time, when the petitions for such increases had been repeatedly rejected since 1994. The Prime Minister's answer was that the petitions were not granted earlier because the Government could not afford it, and it is granting these increases now because our economy had started to turn around. Can you imagine a more shameless lie than this from a prime minister? Or could it be that our Prime Minister thought Malaysians might not have enough intelligence to realise that 1998/99 were our worst recession years, whereas 1995/96 were our golden years of economic growth?
Returning now to Omar's claim of total impartiality, one cannot help but have this nasty suspicion that Omar could have taken the cue from the Prime Minister - it is okay to lie to a stupid people.
Should any one still cherish the faint hope that the Election Commission might be fair and independent this time, he needs only to look at the Commission's mute response to the Prime Minister's recent series of explicit threats of racial violence should Barisan Nasional lose 2/3 majority in Parliament. In spite of vociferous and vehement protests from the Alternative Front to such explicit and repeated blackmail from the Prime Minister to the electorate, the Election Commission remains silent.
The only way the people can be convinced now that the coming elections may be conducted free and fair is to put in place a truly independent Election Committee similar to the one in Indonesia. This Indonesian Election Committee had recently won the applaud of not only the Indonesians but the whole world in conducting a truly democratic election for the first time in 4 decades. Our own Committee, if formed, should be made up of independent and reputable persons and representatives from all the participating political parties. It should draw up the ground rules of do's and don'ts and have wide ranging powers to punish offenders in its overall responsibilities to conduct the elections.
However, judging from Mahathir's recent conduct of dishing out allurement and threats alike at equal ease, it is perhaps a bit of wishful thinking that he would agree that his trigger happy days be curtailed by the creation of such a committee. Instead, it may be more realistic to take his recent promise of "the dirtiest elections in history" seriously, and brace ourselves for surprises that may spring out from his bag of dirty tricks.
With Mahathir still exercising his firm grip on all Government institutions and the mass media to serve his personal interests, it is fair comment to say that the coming elections will be neither free nor fair. And the people are powerless to change that certainty.
That leaves the people with only one option, if we do not want this tragic nonsense to perpetuate. And the option is to cast our votes against BN. Putting our 'X' on any party other than BN in our ballot papers will do the job.