Election Commission Chairman Abdul Rashid should consider suspending the Sarawak state general election, in particular in Taib Mahmud’s Balingian,  because of flagrant violation of election law forbidding election campaigning on polling day as Sarawak   BN newspapers continued  to publish pages  of BN election campaigning particularly in Eastern Times and Utusan Sarawak

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament , Saturday) : Election Commission Chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman said yesterday that the Election Commission “could not control what the media wanted to cover or publish” and  that the media was merely performing its duties and exercising its rights whether to report or not to report issues brought up by any political parties as it is “the media’s privileges; their rights”.

Rashid cannot be more wrong, as  unfair, one-sided, biased  and tendentious media reporting is one  principal reason why the ninth general election in Sarawak does not qualify to be described as  free, fair and clean.

Rashid and  the Election Commission had been seriously  remiss, irresponsible  and negligent  in the conscientious discharge of their  constitutional duty for the  conduct of elections in failing to address this bane of the election process in the country down the decades.

I have just returned from Sarawak and I am shocked that Sarawak Barisan Nasional newspapers have openly defied the Election Commission and the law – a heinous election offence going beyond fair and responsible reporting.

The Sarawak Barisan Nasional newspapers, Utusan Sarawak and Eastern Times, today carried page-after-page of reports of BN leaders campaigning for election support and calling on voters to vote for Barisan Nasional candidates  – which is a blatant violation of the election law that there shall be no election campaigning after midnight on  polling day.

Both Eastern Times and Utusan Sarawak in fact carried reports of such open campaigning for votes on the front-pages, with the former carrying some 16 pages blatantly violating the election law.

This is a defiance and test  of the authority and integrity of the Election Commission to uphold the election law and credibility.

In countries like India where the Election Commission is an  intrepid symbol of integrity of fair election laws and their enforcement, fearing neither the ruling parties nor the Opposition, an order would have been issued to suspend elections.

Abdul Rashid should consider suspending the Sarawak state general election, at least in constituencies where the BN newspapers Utusan Sarawak and Eastern Times have the heaviest distribution,  because of flagrant violation of election law forbidding election campaigning on polling day – including Balingian, the constituency of the Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud

(20/05/2006)