It is not the best of omens, it seems. Last month's general election gave the Barisan Nasional (BN) and its new chairperson Abdullah Ahmad Badawi their best ever result - 90 percent of the 219 seats in Parliament, control of 11 of 12 states which held elections (the 13th, Sarawak, is a BN controlled state anyway).

Yet the Election Commission's (EC) less-than-honest conduct of the exercise and darker forces marred the polls. Any other country with a democratic tradition, however nascent, would have nullified it.

The BN, instead, has wished away the problems and dismissed opposition claims of poll rigging as sour grapes. But there is one huge difference. At no point, did the opposition expect to unseat the BN government, indeed they accepted it would get at least a two-thirds majority.

The results surprised everyone, including BN and Umno leaders. Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak was uncertain of his chances in Pekan, and he had asked his aides a day before polling to persuade the PAS candidate, a retired brigadier-general, to step down.

Pak Lah himself had accepted the inevitable that Kelantan and Trengganu would remain under PAS control, and his best hope was to retain Perlis and Kedah, and prevent an electoral haemorrhage in the other states.

Why only in Selangor?

Both should have stepped in when the EC played fast and loose with the election rules, and unilaterally extended the voting hours in Selangor. The official reason is unconvincing. The hours of voting were gazetted as between 0800 and 1700. That could only be changed only with the consent of the candidates. The EC does not have the right to do that unilaterally.

The EC, in its defence, said it was because of the rush of voters as polling stations were about to close. That is not valid. Every voter knew of the voting hours well ahead. Extending the hours at the last minute to cater for those already in the compound could be justified, but not a blanket two-hour extension for others who missed out to come and vote.

In any case, the extension was not publicised. So how would voters know about the changed hours? Besides, it was only in Selangor that the extension was allowed, not in the other states. Why? What was so special about Selangor that it needed special extension of voting hours?

It appears that by noon on polling day, March 21, barely nine percent had cast their votes. The electoral roll was in shambles in Selangor and elsewhere, with the EC itself unable to pinpoint which list was to be used. Many who had gone to vote in the morning could not find their names, and the EC officials, many from Umno Youth and Puteri Umno, could not provide the details from their computerised electoral list. In any case, that list differed from its own computerised list, and certainly from the list with the opposition candidates.

Even assuming the EC could make a case to extend the polling hours, it could do so only for state seats Selangor, not for the parliamentary constituencies in the state. For that comes under different rules. As it is, in Selangor, those voting for their parliamentary candidates, had an advantage the other states did not have. The opposition parties have come out with a list of constitutional and legal errors in how the general election was conducted. The EC fell flat on its face. Its chairperson Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman has called for a royal commission. But this was immediately rejected by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

More important, the EC that it failed in its task, and one so serious, that the 2004 general election could well have been illegal. The EC ignored its constitutional duty and made ad hoc arrangements, the most serious of which was the electoral roll.

In elections, the last gazetted electoral list is used. It may have been gazetted months earlier. That was how it had been all along. This time, the electoral list was to be the one issued to candidates on nomination day. But it was not. By all accounts, one gazetted on March 15, two days after nomination day, was used.

The EC insists that those who disagree should take it to the courts. It had safeguarded itself with laws to make this as expensive as possible for those who do so. A RM10,000 deposit is required with each election petition. Malaysian elections are so expensive that if one does not have a minimum of RM250,000 in cash before hand, it is futile to even think of contesting. The aim it appears is to bankrupt the opposition parties and others from contesting, for their ability to be an alternative government must first have at least RM100 million available.

Integrity beyond reproach

I do not know how it would meet this challenge of the EC's kamikaze approach to conducting the elections. It is clear the EC has much to explain. Polling in Selangor was so flawed that this could support a call for fresh elections. But the EC is not about to explain its actions. Nor will the government, which insists the integrity of the EC is beyond reproach.

But there is more to the EC's conduct than the polls extension in Selangor. It unilaterally suspended polling for five hours in Sungei Lembing in Pahang when the wrong party logo was affixed to the name of the opposition candidate. But it was not enough. Polling had to be nullified and called again a week later. In other words, the EC made two mistakes: suspending the polls, and calling for fresh polls.

Add to this the remarkable fact that in many contentious parliamentary constituencies, as many as 10,000 voters did not cast their votes for Parliament but did for the state assembly. This is all but impossible, since there is someone in every polling station whose only role is to help the voter to push the ballots in. This person should have spotted it whenever a voter did not put in the parliamentary ballot paper.

The EC displayed the missing votes on its website, but quickly removed it when the opposition began to question it. Why? If it is an official result, it should not have. If it is not official, it should not have been there. But enough Malaysians downloaded the figures to raise serious doubts about the fairness and fair play in the 2004 general election, and put the EC on the defensive.

It puts Pak Lah in a spot. Despite his solid victory, he sits atop an uneasy throne. He cannot assign blame to the EC. For it is he who must protest the loudest at this deliberate hijacking of the general election, at the moment by parties unknown, to make his tenure uncomfortable.

He should have relied on his personal popularity and the tremendous goodwill he had as the new prime minister, and built on that. The longer he continues, without addressing the growing doubt that this general election is irrevocably flawed, the more the ground will move away from the BN and him personally.

The Malay ground is furious. It feels cheated. The creative delineation of the constituencies, when large sections of Chinese communities were added to solid Malay seats inclined to the opposition has raised a demon more serious than what the former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim created.

The BN and Pak Lah believe they can ride out the storm, but they view the world from the eye of the storm, unaware of the violence outside of it. But make no mistake, they will slip into the violence if they do nothing about it.

For a start, they must consider fresh elections for the Selangor state assembly. But they cannot stop there. More dramatic measures must be taken to erase the growing view that we are now descending into the elections favoured by African presidents, where elections are held to vote them into power. God forbid if that should be the fate of elections in Malaysia.