Wan Ahmad has insulted voters, says DAP

The Election Commission’s (EC) dismissal of the Merdeka Centre’s survey finding - that 92 percent of Malaysians support a clean-up of the electoral roll before the next general election - has only proved the agency’s absence of independence, said the DAP.

In a statement today, DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua (left) ticked off EC deputy chief Wan Ahmad Wan Omar for dismissing the survey outcome as “trivial” and remarking that the respondents were essentially ignorant.

Pua said Wan Ahmad had further insulted the respondents 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 by The Malaysian Insider.

“The sheer arrogance of the EC proves that it has not desire to implement free and fair elections in Malaysia and public opinion, no matter how negative, does not move them,” said Pua, also the Petaling Jaya Utara MP.

He said the comments have demonstrated that Wan Ahmad is in fact the ignoramus, and not the Malaysian public who participated in the survey.

“That is because he had made the scornful comments without first having read the actual survey.  And if he did, he obviously could not understand the survey or survey methodologies.”

Pua noted that Merdeka Centre has taken pains to select voters “through random stratified sampling method along the lines of ethnicity, gender, age and state” with a margin of error estimated at ±3.07 percent.

On Wan Ahmad's argument that the respondents were mostly first-time voters who do not know the law, Pua noted that only 22 percent of the sample is under the age of 30.

This means that the overwhelming majority of the sample respondents would have voted at least twice to date.

“The fact that the EC is refusing to even investigate the survey results, as to why only 44 percent of Malaysians believed that our electoral system is free of irregularities also emphasises 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 EC chairperson and his deputy, who are also members of Umno, have become biggest impediments to the transformation of our electoral process.

“It is also clear that they are in connivance with the Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to ensure that whatever 'reforms' executed will not remove the ability of Umno and BN to win through cheating and fraud.”

Continued support for Bersih

He reiterated that DAP and Pakatan Rakyat component parties will continue to support the demands of electoral reform coalition Bersih toward clean and fair elections, as this has been justified by strong empirical evidence from the Merdeka Centre survey.

“We also call upon the EC chairperson and his deputy to resign for failing in their constitutional duties to ensure a clean, free and fair election system for Malaysians, and for acting as stooges of the BN government,” Pua added.

Wan Ahmad has repeatedly denied that he is an Umno member and has lodged a police report against  PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution who made the allegation.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz has clarified that the EC chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof's Umno membership had lapsed 30 years ago.