Media statement by Tony Pua Kiam Wee in Kuala Lumpur on Monday, 28^th May 2012:

The EC's dismissal of Merdeka Centre's survey results proved the agency's complete lack of independence

Despite an overwhelming result where 92% of Malaysians survey by Merdeka Centre wants the electoral roll "cleaned" before the next general elections, EC Deputy Chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar has dismissed it as "trivial".

When contacted by Malaysiakini, he claimed that the survey respondents were essentially ignorant and hence "might not know what they are talking about".

He further insulted those who responded by saying that "it would be better if Merdeka Centre had surveyed voters who had just cast their ballots, rather than asking rempits from the side of the road", as reported on The Malaysian Insider.

The sheer arrogance of the Election Commission proves that it has not desire of implementing free and fair elections in Malaysia and public opinion, no matter how negative, does not move them. Instead, the Deputy EC Chairman had alluded that the respondents were randomly picked from the streets or "rempits from the side of the road".

In fact, the comments from Datuk Wan Ahmad demonstrate that he is the ignoramous, and not the Malaysian public who participated in the Merdeka Center survey. That is because he had made the scornful comments without first having read the actual survey itself! And if he did, he obviously could not understand the survey or survey methodologies.

It was clear from the survey results that Merdeka Centre has taken pains to select voters "through random stratified sampling method along the lines of ethnicity, gender, age and state". They were certainly not randomly picked from the streets. The survey margin of error estimated at ±3.07%.

Datuk Wan Ahmad's suggestion that these were mostly first time voters who did not know the law is also ignorant because only 22% of the sample is under the age of 30, which meant that the overwhelming majority of the sample respondents would have voted at least twice in their lives.

The fact that the EC is refusing to even investigate the survey results, as to why only 44% of Malaysians believed that our electoral system is free from irregularities also emphasizes the fact that the Commission is only interested in ensuring an unequal election system and campaign platform to rob Malaysians of their rightful choice.

It is clear that Malaysians have lost faith in the EC to carry out free and fair elections. The Chairman and his Deputy of the EC, who are also members of Umno, have become biggest impediments to the transformation of our Malaysian electoral process. It is also clear that they are in connivance with the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Najib Razak to ensure that whatever "reforms" executed will not remove the ability of UMNO and Barisan Nasional to win through cheating and fraud.

As a result, DAP and the Pakatan Rakyat component parties will continue to support the demands by Bersih for free and fair elections, justified with very strong empirical evidence from the Merdeka Centre survey. We also call upon the EC chairman and his deputy to resign from their current positions for failing in their constitutional duties to ensure a clean, free and fair election system for Malaysians, and for acting as stooges of the Barisan Nasional government.

* Tony Pua Kiam Wee, DAP National Publicity Secretary & MP for Petaling Jaya Utara