The idea of having independent bodies such as Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) monitoring the electoral process is to assist the Election Commission (EC) in doing a good job; therefore, by rejecting Suhakam, the EC has lost a golden opportunity to show that it is truly non-partisan.
This also raises a lot of doubts, especially after the EC announced that it would invite international election watchdogs from a list of seven countries, six of which performed worse than Malaysia in the democracy index.
I therefore call upon the EC chairman, Mohd Hashim Abdullah to look at the list of countries once again to see where these countries occupy in The Economist’s Democracy Index 2017 and Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2018.
The rejection of the Suhakam as an accredited election observer by the EC is akin to saying that the EC is simply not interested in conducting a free and fair election.