My wife and I are both registered voters. We emailed out application to vote overseas (at the Malaysian Consulate in Melbourne) to the Election Commission on Feb 19, 2013, but we have yet to receive any response from the EC.

There wasn't even an auto-generated notification of receipt of the application, something you would expect in this day and age in any civil service that prides itself on Bersih, Cekap, Amanah .

We have checked out our records on the EC website and there has been no change to our voting status, i.e. we are not able to vote overseas.

Why is this taking so long? If there is an error in our application, should we not be informed about it and allow us to correct any mistakes?

Something is not right here. The delay on a mere administrative matter is way too long, especially when all the information pertaining to our travels back home can be verified easily.

The EC had announced with great fanfare that all Malaysians overseas who are registered voters can now vote if they have been in the country at least 30 days over a five-year period.

The EC has said that several thousands have applied to vote overseas, but has not disclosed how many of us overseas have been successfully in our application. I dare say very few indeed.

Our experience so far gives rise to suspicion that this is merely a PR exercise by the EC and government to placate public anger with the highly-politicised EC, which should return to its role as an independent institution.

With the uncertainty on our voting status, we can't plan ahead. We can't fly back to vote because we have already applied to vote overseas.

Is this a deliberate attempt to deny us our right to vote during the impending general election?