At a Press conference held by EC/SPR yesterday at IKBN-Penanti by-election’s nomination centre, EC’s chairman replied to MAFREL’s request that party tents (`pondok panas’) be banned on polling day to uphold the moratorium on campaigning for polling day, by saying that EC still ban the `pondok panas’ but allow the parties to set up information counter to help voters to check their voting status. If MAFREL want the party tents to be stopped he suggested that MAFREL should speak to the parties concerned.
For once MAFREL got more than it asked for: to take over the role of EC to enforce the campaign moratorium on polling day!
EC chair claimed that for once there is an agreement between EC and MAFREL over the ban of campaigning on polling day. This is quite jarring with facts. For the record MAFREL proposed the ban of party campaign on polling day since its beginning. Perhaps the new SPR team had not bothered to read up MAFREL’s reports on this.
EC is unhappy with MAFREL over this issue -as reflected by the restriction of accredited MAFREL’s nomination day observer to only 1 person, from 3 MAFREL applied for. What have they got to hide?
Ong BK
