DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang is unconvinced that the Election Offences Amendment Bill 2002 which Parliament started debating yesterday will solve election abuses.

Describing it as "premature and irrelevant", Lim said the bill, first presented to Parliament in March, was drafted without any consultation with opposition parties.

"It was conceived with the primary objective to make life as difficult as possible for the opposition, but as comfortable as possible for the ruling party," he said in a statement.

"This was why the amendment bill failed completely to address the substantive electoral abuses which afflict the electoral system in the past few decades," he said, claiming they involve "abuse of money, media manipulation and government machinery exploitation (also known as 3M)".

The former Opposition Leader claimed the Election Commission (EC) not only closed its eyes to the 3M electoral abuses, but tried to give a certain legitimacy to money politics by raising up to four-fold the maximum election expenditure permissible for election candidates.

The amount for a parliamentary candidate was raised from RM50,000 to RM200,000 while the maximum for a state assembly candidate went from RM30,000 to RM100,000.

Lim questioned why the EC allowed such a big increase when RM100,000 had suffice for a parliamentary candidate and RM50,000 for state assembly candidate.