The Election Commission (EC) today claimed that some political parties were out to tarnish the commission's image by using unreturned postal votes to 'prove' that ballot papers in their favour had been discarded during the just-concluded general election.

EC chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman described this as a dirty tactic used to give the public the impression that vote-rigging had occurred.

"It is very disappointing that they have resorted to this to tarnish the commission's image. It shouldn't have happened and I leave it to the people to determine who the real liars are," he said at a press conference at his office in Putrajaya today.

According to Bernama , he alleged that some political party agents had collected unreturned postal ballot papers and later handed these over to certain political leaders.

"They then marked (the ballot papers) to show to the public that these ballot papers in their favour had been removed from the ballot boxes. It is impossible for something like this to happen," he said.

Abdul Rashid said he based his claim on reports which showed photos of ballot papers - which he said in reality were postal ballot papers and not ballot papers issued for polling stations.

"This is based on the serial number. If you want to know whether it (the claim) is true or not, then take the matter to court," he challenged.

Navy personnel

He said there were about 67,000 unreturned postal ballot papers out of the 200,712 issued by the EC for the elections. Of the unreturned batch, 35,193 postal ballot papers were for parliamentary seats and 31,984 for state seats.

According to him, in every election, a large number of police and army personnel do not return their ballot papers on time.

In Lumut alone, he revealed, more than 5,000 postal ballot papers had not been returned by the navy base.

"I was made to understand that many navy personnel were out patrolling at sea, so they could not make it (in time for the postal balloting exercise)," Abdul Rashid said.

The EC chief also observed that there were 164,256 spoilt votes for parliamentary seats and 134,362 for the state seats for the controversy-ridden polls.

Abdul Rashid had called the press conference to announce the findings of the EC's internal probe - headed by secretary Wan Ahmad Wan Omar - into glitches which surfaced for the Sungai Lembing state seat during the elections.

Not checked

He said the EC and national printers Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Berhad (PNMB) have traced the error in ballot paper printing to the failure of two of the latter's proofreaders in doing their job efficiently.

The error involved in printing the party symbol of Keadilan in the space meant for the PAS symbol. This led to polling being nullified for the constituency and a fresh poll being held on March 28.

"The proof copy of the ballot paper was not sent to the Pahang State Election officer in line with agreed procedures. This, of course, was a breach and can be considered unprofessional," he said.

When the printed ballot papers were sent to the office of the returning officer for the Paya Besar parliamentary constituency, the bundle was not checked because it was assumed everything was in order.

"The negligence of the returning officer for the Sungai Lembing state seat cannot be termed serious as there was a strong mitigating factor - the postal ballot papers issued earlier were in order and he assumed that all the rest of the ballot papers were all right," Abdul Rashid said.

"Even if the printing error had been detected on March 20, the eve of polling day, there would still have been a strong possibility of polling being postponed because new papers could not have been printed on time."

A lesson

Abdul Rashid said PNMB was at fault because it did not send the proof copy to the state returning officer in line with the established procedures.

Abdul Rashid admitted, however, none of the 23 polling station heads in Pahang had checked their bundle of ballot papers upon collecting them from the state election office on polling day. This in spite of they being earlier briefed about the need to do so.

"The mistake was detected only when voters complained about the error," he said.

Abdul Rashid said he hoped this would be a lesson to all concerned to be more careful the next time around.