The Election Commission's (EC) decision to use indelible inks of different colours for early voting and ordinary voting has drawn flak from the PAS Youth wing, which says the move will not eliminate vote rigging.

"The election bureau of PAS Youth wing rejects using different inks for the election because there will still be room for fraudulent manipulation should the new measure be implemented," bureau chief Mohd Sany Hamzan said in a statement today.

indelible ink 020607 Among others, Sany said, the movement had earlier exposed that civil servants such as army and police personnel are qualified to vote as both postal voters and ordinary voters because they have two different identities.

"Using different inks will not solve the problem of duplicate voters," he said.

He advised the EC not to be "stupidly arrogant" and instead learn from other countries higher numbers of voters and were capable of conducting more transparent elections.

"Besides cleaning up the electoral roll, the election bureau of PAS Youth urges the EC to use only one colour of indelible ink in the next general election," Sany added.

According to Malay daily Sinar Harian , EC chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said the commission has decided to use two different colours of indelible ink for early voting and ordinary voting respectively.

This is to ensure the smoothness of a transparent, free and clean election, Aziz was quoted as saying.

A total of 230,000 bottles of indelible ink will be allocated for 12.4 million voters on polling day while 10,000 will be reserved for early voters, including military, police and general operations force personnel as well as their families.

For security reasons, the ink colours would only be revealed on polling day, Aziz said.

The new regulation making indelible ink a compulsory requirement for every voter, a proposal by the parliamentary select committee on electoral reform, was gazetted on Wednesday.