There’s no doubt that the 13th general election (GE13) was the most competitive in Malaysian history. With so much at stake, both the ruling and the opposition parties spared no effort and resources to win the electoral war.

In the run-up to GE13, opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat and a number of civil society NGOs had accused BN of planning to resort to unethical and even underhand tactics in a desperate attempt to cling on to power. Serious allegations of phantom voters, millions of foreigners being given ICs and the right to vote, gerrymandering, large-scale ballot stuffing, etc were levelled against the ruling party.

As such the launching of the independent election monitoring watchdog Pemantau - a joint-effort of Bersih, Mafrel and Pusat Komas - was warmly applauded and welcomed by many Malaysians, including this writer, as a praiseworthy and timely effort to ensure a ‘Clean, Free and Fair’ election and to safeguard people’s democratic rights.

Naturally Pemantau’s report - released on Sept 10 - was much anticipated. However, to my considerable disappointment, I found the report to be somewhat underwhelming, especially given the length of time taken (more than four months) and the quality and quantity of resources mobilised to prepared it.

There are serious flaws in the entire spectrum of Pemantau’s election monitoring cycle - the methodology, management of monitors, selection and training process, monitoring process, findings, recommendations and the final report itself.

When performing an evaluation, the first and foremost task is to define the standard or yardstick employed to measure against. The standard selected should ideally be an internationally accepted benchmark so the outcome obtained can be compared with others anywhere in the world. This is the foundation and a prerequisite of the scientific methodology.

However in the case Pemantau, disappointingly, it did not define the standard to be used before setting off to perform their evaluation. In comparison, the officially accredited independent election monitoring team - Pemerhati - clearly stated that they were using the International Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) ‘Declaration On Criteria For Free and Fair Elections’, as the yardstick to base their evaluations on.

Pemantau claims that it managed to recruit “more than 2,000 volunteers” who were assigned as monitors to 87 parliamentary constituencies considered “hot seats”. Surprisingly the watchdog did not provide the exact number of the monitors or disclose the names of constituencies observed - clear warning signs and leading indicators of a poorly written and managed project.

These volunteers were practically picked off the streets as the basic entry qualifications were so low that almost anyone could have qualified as a monitor.

It is apparent from the final write-up, media reports, various blog posts as well as my own conversations with the volunteers themselves that these monitors were selected without any background checks and sent off to work with little or no training at all. Most of these volunteers were people who had little or no understanding on the electoral process at all - with sizeable number not having voted before.

More worryingly a vast majority of these monitors were die-hard supporters or members of Pakatan Rakyat. Predictably the main motivation of these volunteers was certainly not a noble sense of civic duty or ensuring the integrity of the electoral process but in preventing BN from winning the GE and representing their party’s interests.

Question mark on impartiality

As such this raises a very big question mark on the impartiality of their observations and the credibility of entire Pemantau’s monitoring process.

Many of these “observers” not unsurprisingly did not confine themselves to monitoring but actively and aggressively inserted themselves in to the election process - a cardinal sin in any research project.

There were numerous cases where these monitors physically abused, prevented and even assaulted voters looking like foreigners. They also obstructed the Election Commission (EC) officials from discharging their duties and even defied police orders. Some of the observers went too far and were arrested by the police. Some of these shocking, shameful scenes were captured on camera and can be viewed in the social media websites like You Tube and Facebook.

Let’s look into the details of Pemantau’s major findings and evaluate the validity of their “observations” and “recommendations”.

Pemantau stated that 13GE “saw an unprecedented and alarming swell in political violence” while paradoxically at the same time complained of the police’s “excessive presence” and the usage of barbed wires, FRU squads and armed policemen.

The fact that the GE was conducted largely in a peaceful and smooth manner was a testament to the Royal Malaysian Police’s (PDRM) excellent security arrangement. In fact the police’s impartiality and professionalism during the GE drew widespread praise from most Malaysians. As such Pemantau’s criticism of police’s handling of security for GE13 is indeed puzzling and certainly widely off-the-mark.

Quoting reports from Malaysiakini and statements issued by Pakatan leaders, the election watchdog accused BN supporters of harassment and acts of violence against their political opponents and media personnel. However, Pemantau was completely silent and blind to countless acts of violence perpetuated by leaders and supporters of Pakatan.

There were dozens of cases where Pakatan supporters took the law onto their own hands, harassed, physically blocked and in some cases even assaulted voters to prevent them from voting. Pakatan mobs also attacked buses and vehicles and destroyed properties. This is not mere allegations as dozens of people have been charged with and sentenced for electoral violence.

Astonishingly Pemantau failed to mention any of these violent acts committed by Pakatan supporters and Pemantau monitors at all.

Pemantau also gave examples where BN supporters or candidates used race and religion issues in their campaigns to attack their political opponents. Pemantau cited and published speeches, SMSes, pamphlets, posters, etc. to support their observations.

Ethnic and religious fissures

However, the election watchdog makes no mention of the fact that Pakatan’s entire election strategy revolved around capitalising and manipulation of ethnic and religious fissures. DAP’s No 1 message was Umno is a racist party that oppresses the non-Malays. PAS meanwhile positioned itself as adhering to pure Islamic principles while painting rival Umno as a corrupt, infidel party.

Christian Pakatan leaders meanwhile latched upon the ‘Allah’ issue to tar BN as anti-Christ. Indian PKR and DAP leaders politicised every single Indian issue in order to appear pro-Indian and make BN look oppressive and cruel by politicising issues like lock-up deaths and IC-less Indians.

In the social media arena, supporters of Pakatan openly spread malicious lies and messages of hate by fanning racial and religious emotions. The notorious Red Bean Army churned out hundreds of false news related to ethnicity and religion to attack BN. Countless chain emails and SMSes were sent out – many of them deliberately calculated to provoke and inflame race and religious sensitivities.

The second major issue raised by Pemantau was the alleged irregularities in the electoral roll. In writing an official report, it is important to include only the points that were actually witnessed and validated by monitors. Merely reproducing and regurgitating complaints received from supporters of political parties without proper validation or subjecting these to a “common-sense” test will only serve to deprive the report of its credibility.

For example, Pemantau reported several cases where the names of voters missing from the electoral rolls. But the group neither authenticated these claims nor questioned the complainants on why they did not check the 2013 electoral roll, published months in advance, to ensure their names were in it before heading out to vote on the election day.

In another example, Pemantau reported a case of a Sabah voter with two ICs. The photos of both ICs were reproduced in the report. Firstly why would anyone with two ICs even admit it since it is clearly a serious criminal offense? Secondly, even from the photo, one of the identity cards resembles a driving licence than a MyKad. Obviously an average Malaysian would be able to differentiate between an original and a badly made fake one.

Obvious mistakes such as these raise serious questions on the credibility of Pemantau observers and truthfulness of their report.

In my view that the most important and interesting aspect of the report was not what was in it but rather what wasn’t. What Pemantau did not say out openly was that it found no evidence whatsoever on large-scale electoral fraud that Bersih and Pakatan leaders had alleged before during and after the GE. In fact some of the charges made by Pemantau itself on election day were quietly withdrawn from the final report.

Ignoring the elephant in the room

Inexplicably however, the watchdog chose to ignore the elephant in the room and instead took a massive leap of logic and pronounced the election as ‘Not Clean, Free or Fair’, apparently based on the minor violations committed by the political actors.

There is no disputing the fact that both side violated numerous electoral regulations. However, just because the political parties did not respect some of the ethical and legal requirements, the entire electoral system cannot be judged as “Not Clean, Free and Fair”.

True measurement of an electoral system is based several dimensions - structural, policy and process - rather than micro level behaviour of various stakeholders. If we use Pemantau’s logic and approach then even the US and the UK elections would have been deemed “Not Clean Free and Fair”.

In summary, Pemantau’s report, though of mediocre quality and suspect credibility, does clear up one thing - that the accusations of massive cheating and fraud made by the leaders of Pakatan and Bersih were completely groundless and false.

With this admission by Bersih, would Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Kit Siang, Hadi Awang and Ambiga Sreenevasan collectively accept that they were wrong and apologise to BN and most importantly to Malaysian people? Such an apology and admission of guilt is the least they can do as their false allegations and organising of the infamous Black 505 rallies had seriously damaged the image of the nation and raised the political temperatures to a boiling point.