Malaysian Election Scraps Indelible Ink, RM2.4 Million Down the Drain

The Election Commission (EC) for the upcoming Malaysian General election has scrapped the usage of indelible ink on polling day (March 8th 2008). It was actually meant to safeguard against multiple or phantom voting. The plan was scrapped because police received reports of a plan to “sabotage” the election process in Perlis, Kedah and Kelantan. According to theStar's report, "police investigations revealed that people had smuggled the ink in and had planned to go to rural and remote areas to trick village folk into believing that their fingernails had to be marked before they can go to vote."

“In the beginning, we thought it was just an ordinary process that we could just introduce but then we realised, after getting all the necessary advice from the legal experts, that we would have to take a look at the (Federal) Constitution.”

So now what? You just wasted RM2 million on those darn inks from India. Taxpayer's money. So Now what? Just because you "thought it was just an ordinary process" so we should ok the RM2 million down the drain? Well, according to this report, it's actually RM2.4 million on 48000 bottles on indelible ink. A very bad decision in the 1st place, a decision made without being really sure of the possible "confusions" it may cause. So what do we do about phantom voters now? Can someone tell me? No, don't keep telling me it's too corrupted. Everyone knows it.

More complaints from the blogosphere:
Let’s help to think what to do with RM2.4 million worth of indelible ink, will ya?
Indelible ink no more, foul-play plenty more!
What to do with all the indelible ink?
Another dirty trick by the EC - use of indelible ink cancelled...
WTF? Election Commission has cancelled use of indelible ink at ...

There's a lot more. Just head over to http://blogsearch.google.com/ and search the term "indelible ink". Just like what a rakyat said on 8TV news, we can wash the drains ourselves, we just want to express ourselves.