The opposition is manipulating the issue of free and fair elections merely to turn the tide against BN after it began losing a number of recent by-elections, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Koh Tsu Koon says.

In his column in Chinese newspaper Sin Chew Daily today, Koh recalled that the opposition would cry foul about an unfair electoral system whenever it suffered setback in elections.

"(DAP leader) Lim Kit Siang would criticise that election as 'the dirtiest and most unfair in the history of Malaysia.

NONE "However, when Pakatan Rakyat won five state governments and denied BN's two-thirds majority in Parliament in the March 8 general election, criticism against the electoral system was absent in the next one year."

The opposition continued to remain silent on the electoral system from August 2008 to August 2009 as it triumphed in seven out of eight by-elections, Koh said.

However, according to the Gerakan president, the trend changed after BN reclaimed its ground in the Bagan Pinang by-election in October 2009 and the Hulu Selangor by-election in April 2010, which saw the opposition blaming the electoral system for its defeats.

"BN won four out of the next five by-elections, indicating that voters are returning to BN. Therefore Pakatan beefed up its effort to push for the Bersih rally. PAS even publicly called on millions of its members to flood the streets."

Poor handling of issue led to public outcry

Koh concluded that Pakatan was capitalising on the issue of free and fair election for its political interests.

However, he admitted, senior government officers and the police had failed to address the issue appropriately, which led to the public outcry.

He wrote that people inside and outside of the country misunderstood the BN as suppressing public demands and resisting fair election, and this had tarnished the ruling coalition's image.

Koh lauded Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's decision to establish a parliamentary select committee on electoral reform, but stressed that this did not implicate that the current electoral system was full of fraud.

Echoing the same argument by the Election Commission (EC), he commented that the 'political tsunami' of 2008 would not have happened if the electoral system had been manipulated by the ruling parties.

He then quoted the US State Department's Human Rights Country Report 2009, which states that Malaysia's 2008 general election "was conducted in a generally transparent manner and witnessed significant opposition gains".

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