Wednesday, March 4, 2009

malaysiakini and FAIRER Elections?

So the Elections Commission has decided to hold 3 by-elections on the same day; ie
7th April 2009 as described in this malaysiakini article Batang Ai by-election on April 7 .
Now if you observe the nomination date -the 29th of March that is a Sunday but polling date is for a Tuesday, a working day.
It appears that the EC is taking the easy way out by reducing the number of voters who will return to vote from outstation - ie the younger voters who are most likely to vote the opposition.
It seems that the EC always makes decisions that favour the ruling BN. Postal votes are not affected by a Tuesday poll but definitely some voters will not be bothered to travel for a Tuesday smack in the middle of a work week.
A Tuesday poll also creates havoc with thousands of school children who will be deprived of their schools while a Saturday or Sunday poll would not cause such a disruption. What is the view of the education authorities and the teachers?
Yesterday we witnessed the ugly scenario of the Executive bullying the Legislative and Judiciary branches so this latest ploy of the EC should not be surprising but a normal SOP.

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