KUALA LUMPUR, March 5: Malaysian government restrictions on free speech, freedom of assembly and the media will deny citizens a fair vote in Saturday’s general election, a rights group said on Wednesday.

Malaysia’s ruling Barisan Nasional coalition is considered certain to be re-elected in the poll, but risks a backlash by Buddhist ethnic Chinese and Hindu ethnic Indians, who complain of religious and racial inequality in the mainly Muslim nation.

The opposition, which wants to deny Barisan a two-thirds majority in parliament, the level needed to change the constitution, hopes to draw a protest vote over rising food and fuel costs, street crimes and an influx of cheap foreign labour.

But rights body Human Rights Watch said the authorities’ manipulation of the electoral process seemed to aim at ensuring Barisan retains the majority it has held since 1969.

“Once again, elections in Malaysia are grossly unfair to the opposition,” Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

“Malaysia’s ruling coalition is too comfortable with the status quo to allow reforms that would level the playing field.”

Watchdog group Malaysians for Free and Fair Elections said it had dropped plans to act as polling day monitor in protest against election officials’ decision to scrap an earlier arrangement to introduce indelible ink at Saturday’s poll.

“Indelible ink is very useful and effective to curb against any impersonation as well as multiple voting actions,” said the group’s deputy chairman Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh.

The decision not to use indelible ink suggested a conspiracy to help the government win, said Malaysia’s hardline opposition Islamists, the Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS).

“The announcement validates PAS’s claim that there exists a Barisan conspiracy with cooperation from the election commission and other government agencies to ensure an undemocratic Barisan victory,” PAS spokesman Roslan Shahir told reporters.

INDELIBLE INK: Malaysia had said it would use the ink — to be daubed on a voter’s finger to ensure he or she could not attempt to cast a second ballot — for the first time in the poll to help meet an opposition demand to combat electoral fraud.

Malaysia’s de facto opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said in Singapore he believed the election was flawed.

“They promised indelible ink and they cancelled at the last moment, it’s shameful,” he told a news conference. “India with its 1 billion people can conduct free and fair elections with indelible ink and nobody was hurt. But not in our case.”Anwar also said the coalition of opposition parties had already secured one-third of the seats in parliament, based on information from ruling party sources and other “intelligence apparatus”.

Malaysian law and practice allow the ruling coalition to campaign freely but put severe restraints on opposition groups, with police denying them the permits needed for any gathering of four or more people, for example, Human Rights Watch said. It accused the government of using the spectre of ethnic violence to deter public demonstrations and silence its critics.

—Reuters