I refer to the malaysiakini report Pak Lah: Boycott act of cowardice .

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi - the most distinguished son of Penang - has criticised the Batu Talam by-election poll boycot by the opposition as 'cowardly' in that they `scared to lose'.

From a survey of electoral cowardice we can, however, see that maintaining unfree and unfair election systems in Malaysia to keep a party in power for close to 50 years sounds much more cowardly.

Whether the boycot can 'convince' the ruling parties and Election Commission to improve the electoral standards in Malaysia remians to be seen but it appears that true courage is needed to boycott the election.

After all, the opposition had put up good fights in almost all previous elections despite the handicaps they faced.

Already some unfair practices have reared their ugly heads in Batu Talam. For instance, a government allocation to a Chinese school has been announced to fish for Chinese votes and electoral rolls have not been cleared of dead voters which can account for over 5% - well over the winning margins for many constituencies.

Apart from this, just switch on the television -you will see only the ruling party candidate being featured. The independent candidate, as far as the government media is concerned, is almost non-existent!

The height of cowardice must be the cancellation of local government elections which, of course, is due to the ruling parties being scared of losing. And they did lose big time too when the local elections were practiced.