A voter is taking Election Commission (EC) chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof to task for his recent statement that silver nitrate content of more than one percent in indelible ink can cause cancer or kidney damage, which the voter says is not true.

NONE Disputing Aziz's claim, Stephen Ng, who says he is a chemist by training, said such serious health effects are not even listed on the material safety data sheet (MSDS) of the AgNO3 compound, which instead states there is no available evidence of carcinogenic, teratonic or mutating effects from silver nitrate.

The MSDS outlines health and safety information pertaining to the properties of a particular substance or chemical.

“I find this statement to be obnoxious, coming from the chairperson of a government agency that is supposed to be independent and entrusted to conduct a fair and clean election,” Ng said in an email to Malaysiakini.

Furthermore, he said, silver nitrate in its 99.99 percent purity form could readily be purchased online.

“If it is so serious as to cause cancer and damage the kidney, this would have been carefully studied, not to mention that the sale of silver nitrate online would have been banned,” Ng reasoned.

'Blatant lying' by the EC

Aziz ( below ) had made the statement in an interview published by the Straits Times of Singapore on May 12.

Asked how indelible the ink was, Aziz said the EC was unable to add more silver nitrate to the ink mixture after the Health Ministry informed it of the effects  of the chemical compound on users.

NONE “We paid about RM6 million and it wasn't low quality ink. The problem was that we couldn't put more than one percent of silver nitrate in the ink and the silver nitrate is what makes the ink last.

“We got a letter from the Health Ministry telling us that if we put more than one percent of silver nitrate in the ink, it could damage the kidney and cause cancer,” Aziz had said in the Straits Times interview.

Ng further accused Aziz and the EC of  “blatantly lying” to the people, and said their insistence that the controversial ink would last for seven days, but which was since proven to be easily removable , amounted to “criminal breach of trust (CBT)”.

Ng said he himself was able to remove virtually all traces of the ink from his finger after voting, first with plain soap water, toothpaste and thinner and finally, with Clorox.

He has also lodged a report on this matter at the Desa Jaya police station in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur.

“With more than RM6 million spent on the indelible ink, which is easily removed, this is nothing but a serious case of CBT.

“I therefore urge the police to investigate the case seriously as this involves huge sum of public funds, and help to restore public confidence in our EC and in other public institutions,” Ng said.

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