PETALING JAYA, July 4 ― Indelible ink will be deployed for the upcoming Kuala Besut by-election, according to the Election Commission today, despite unresolved doubts over its efficacy in preventing repeat voting.

The commission’s chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof, said the practice was now incorporated into the country’s electoral system and must be retained.

But he acknowledged the shortfalls of the ink from the May 5 general election, and pledged to address complaints that surrounded the use of the ink.

“We will source for better ink. This is the first time we used indelible ink, so there will be weaknesses such as easy removal, slowness in drying and staining of ballots,” he was quoted as saying by national news agency Bernama today.

One of the demands made by electoral watchdog Bersih, indelible ink was introduced for the first time in Election 2013 but was quickly mired in controversy.

In the May 5 general election, voters flooded social media services with images and videos showing the easy removal of the semi-permanent ink with common household detergents and, in some cases, nothing more than water and some elbow grease.

EC deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar had sought to explain the ink’s failure to stay for its promised seven days by saying the level of silver nitrate — needed to give the ink its permanence — had been kept at just 1 per cent following the Health Ministry’s recommendations and to meet halal requirements for Muslims.

The matter sank deeper into controversy when Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim appeared to communicate that even the 1 per cent of silver nitrate had not been present, telling Parliament last week that there were “no chemicals” in the ink.

This forced Wan Ahmad to explain away the minister’s reply as a matter of semantics.

“There is indeed silver nitrate,” Wan Ahmad told The Malay Mail Online last week.

He said that silver nitrate was likely classified as a metal, instead of a chemical, adding that food colouring was used to turn the indelible ink red for early voters and dark blue for ordinary voters.

The matter is now the subject of a probe by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to determine if there had been corruption or power abuse in several aspects involving the ink.