KUALA LUMPUR, 4 March: The Election Commission (EC) failed to scrape the general impression that the body is free from influence of any political party and is impartial.
This is due to a number of previous statements issued by the EC, indicating that the body is not fair to all political parties and are on the side of Umno-BN.
According to the Co-Chairman of the NGO ‘Coalition For Clean And Fair Elections’ (BERSIH), Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, all political parties should be given equal treatment.
“The problem now is that the E,C which has been given this responsibility, is increasingly losing the trust of the people.
“As is media freedom for the opposition, it is like a joke.
“Their claims that this country is supposedly practicing media freedom is an insult to the intelligence of the people,” said Ambiga at the Malaysian 13th General Elections International Conference.
Ambiga also expressed regret when last year, the EC issued a statement of supposedly not having enough time to clean up the electoral roll.
“They said that there is not enough time, until now, 10 months have already passed, what are they doing?”
Meanwhile, Ambiga also said that BERSIH 2.0 will mobilise about 10,000 volunteer observers to monitor the upcoming GE-13.
The Malaysian 13th General Elections International Conference is a conference organised by the Office of the Opposition Leader, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The conference which was originally planned to be held at the parliament building was moved to the Royal Lake Club because they did not get permission from the House of Representative’s Yang di-Pertua (Chief), Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia.
The two-day conference was also attended by panelists from various political backgrounds, organisations and international representatives.