I find the explanation offered by the Election Commission on its redelineation of boundary exercise just another case of "beating about the bush".

The reality is that the EC is under the Barisan Nasional-led government's thumb, especially that of Umno's. An experience convinced me of it.

Sometime in the mid-1980s I attended a "re-orientation" programme for government (read bumiputra) scholars. Among the speakers was a certain Encik (now Datuk) Abdul Aziz Samsuddin, then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's political secretary, now the deputy education minister.

Aziz openly declared that urban areas with non-bumiputra majorities would be combined into several large constituencies whereas the countryside with dominant bumiputra majorities would be broken up into several constituencies.

This explains in part how BN and Umno manage to retain a comfortable two-third seats majority without ever having to win the same percentage of the popular votes.

The elections in Malaysia have always be a scam.