KUALA LUMPUR, July 17 — Putrajaya will no longer be handing any contracts to the supplier of the flawed indelible ink used in Election 2013, minister Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim said today, citing the need to prevent manipulation.
He also said the indelible ink supplier had been referred to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), saying that he will let the anti-graft agency take charge of the issue.
“The supplier, first of all, this case has been referred to SPRM, let SPRM handle it,” the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said, referring to the MACC by its Malay initials.
Shahidan said there was a need for the details of the ink, which was used to prevent electoral fraud, to remain a secret, adding that everyone would rush to the firm when they found out it was the ink supplier.
“Certainly this company will no longer be given tenders,” he told Parliament in his winding-up speech today.
“Have to get someone else to supply the indelible ink, so that the ink will be a secret of SPR, to ensure there’s no manipulation by any quarters,” the Arau MP said, referring to the Election Commission (EC) by its Malay initials.
Earlier he spoke of the tightly-guarded details of the ink, saying that even senior officials of the EC do not know the colour of the ink.
He said only the commissioners have knowledge of the ink’s colour.
Shahidan did not disclose the supplier’s identity or confirm the disclosure of the name made by PKR’s Rafizi Ramli in Parliament yesterday.
When met in the Parliament lobby today, Rafizi claimed that Shahidan had indirectly confirmed the identity of the indelible ink supplier despite the minister not explicitly referring to any names in his speech.
Yesterday, Rafizi told Parliament that the contract for the indelible ink was awarded via direct negotiation to a businessman named Mohd Salleh Mohd Ali, whom he alleged was a close associate of the EC’s chief and deputy chief.
But EC deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar today denied knowing the alleged supplier and said that he had not played any role in the purchase of the indelible ink.
“I don’t know him and I don’t have anything to do with buying the ink,” Wan Ahmad told The Malay Mail Online today.
EC chairman Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof has distanced himself from any link to Mohd Salleh, saying procurement of the ink was handled by the commission’s secretary Datuk Kamaruddin Mohamed Baria.
But when contacted by The Malay Mail Online today, Kamaruddin declined to comment, merely saying: “I don’t want to talk to reporters.”
The indelible ink, which became a national scandal after voters complained about it coming off easily with household detergents or soap and water, cost about RM7 million, according to Shahidan.
The indelible ink fiasco is now the subject of a civil suit, which was filed last Monday by Pakatan Rakyat (PR) against EC’s seven commissioners, including Wan Ahmad and Abdul Aziz.
The opposition coalition is suing the EC officials for allegedly practising fraud through the use of the indelible ink, which is meant to prevent double-voting, in the 13th general election and wants the High Court here to order fresh polls in all 222 federal constituencies.
PR has noted that it had lost about 30 federal seats with less than 10 per cent of the votes, saying in its statement of claim: “Therefore, even if a small percentage of dishonest voters were able to wrongfully vote more than once because of the deliberate failure of the EC to implement indelible ink, they were sufficient to affect the results in a significant number of seats.”
Barisan Nasional (BN) maintained its grip on power in the May 5 polls by winning 133 federal seats to PR’s 89, 21 seats more than the required 112 seats to form a simple majority.
