No cheating? Bring in observers then, says Harapan

Pakatan Harapan has challenged Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to invite independent election observers to Malaysia for the next general election to prove the latter's claim that the polls are free from cheating.

The coalition's deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin said this was the only way for Najib to prove his claim that there was "no room" for cheating.

"Harapan urges the government to invite independent election observers from the Commonwealth Secretariat and the United Nations," he said.

Malaysia has never invited established international election observation teams before.

During the 2013 elections, observers from the Election Commission's counterparts in the Asean region were invited, but they were not allowed to make public their findings.

It has been pointed out that such reciprocal arrangements will likely lead to bias.

Muhyiddin said Najib's claim that there was no room for cheating was meaningless, because the "cheating" was already taking place.

For instance, Muhyiddin accused the EC of being in cahoots with BN in the ongoing exercise to redraw electoral boundaries in the ruling party's favour.

"Anyone who studies the electoral maps will know that changes were intentionally made to favour BN. Is this not a form of cheating?" asked Muhyiddin in a statement today.

Secondly, Muhyiddin pointed out that there are thousands of dubious entries in the voter list, often without proper addresses.

Finally, he said the EC now wanted to expand the definition of postal voters, although there was no necessity to do so in previous elections.

"If the government really wanted to allow civil servants to vote, they'd make voting day a public holiday," he said.- Mkini