News Legal/General News Let the EC do its job 
| Let the EC do its job |
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| Saturday, 03 January 2009 08:03am | |
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ELECTION Commission chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof could not have had any illusions about what awaited him on taking over arguably the hottest seat any civil servant could have. His predecessor, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Rahman, had grimly stayed the course till his due retirement on Dec 30, but his final year in office was beyond measure the hardest of his quarter-century with the EC, the last eight of them as chairman. Rashid had taken great pride in the EC, which had ushered this country through 11 general elections. He considered Malaysia's unblemished record of never once failing to hold scheduled elections as a testament to the ability of the EC to uphold with honour its status as an agency mandated under Article 114 of the Federal Constitution to be answerable not to Parliament but the Conference of Rulers, with its commissioners granted the rank of senior judges. The 12th general election, however, was a trial-by-fire for everything in which the EC had for so long taken pride. The commission was vilified by the opposition as manipulators of electoral rolls, constituency boundaries and polls results, in collusion with ruling parties to safeguard their incumbencies and sabotage their rivals. Rashid's family home was paint-bombed. Throughout this ordeal, he strove to restrain his comments and contain his fury. At last, unbound by retirement, the former EC chairman has threatened to launch an armada of suits against those he believes defamed him.
While his predecessor plans to take his redemptive campaign to court, Aziz takes his place as commission chief and immediately has to deflect all-too-familiar allegations of irregularities on the electoral roll of the Kuala Terengganu parliamentary constituency. As ever, these have to do with registered voters now departed or deceased, whose names may still be listed. Keeping the rolls current and true is certainly an exacting task, requiring diligent attention -- but it remains a clerical matter, no more. It is as unwarranted now as it was before to suggest any devious intent on the part of the EC wilfully to abuse these anomalies in skewing the electoral odds -- an assertion all the more bizarre now for the gains made by the opposition in the last general election. A bit of commonsensical understanding all around would help the electorate move on from this dead issue. Let the EC get on with its job and the political contest play out at the ballot box, where it belongs Set as favourite Share Email This Comments (0)
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