Indelible ink to make its mark

Each polling stream in the coming general election will get two bottles of indelible black ink that will be applied to the left forefinger of voters. What is the WHOLE purpose behind this ink's usage???

Besides India, Wan Ahmad said the Philippines, Indonesia and many developing countries – especially those in Africa – also used indelible ink to prevent election fraud. SO? What's the exact purpose? How does it prevent election fraud? Where goes the purpose of our smart MYKAD? btw, do the Philippines, Indonesia, African nations citizens have something like MYKAD?

Wan Ahmad said only a small mark would be made on the finger and the ink would stay for about two weeks. So the ink will stay on OUR finger for 2 weeks. Wat right has he got to "decorate" the citizens' finger?

For this general election, the commission said it would need 48,000 bottles of the ink. This will cost RM2.4mil and the whole procedure will take less than RM1mil to implement. RM2.4mil + RM1mil = RM3.4mil. We could have done so many things to help the poor and develop the economy n nation with such amount of money! Why are these people always looking out for ways to waste away the tax-payers' hard-earned money?

First with the "astronaut" program. So we spent the money. One of the malaysians has been up to the moon. So what? Did it bring us any good besides bringing us pride? btw, wat is there to be proud of.. we're barely a "passenger" on the trip to the moon. Anyway, back to the main issue - didn't the cabinet discuss abt this in the first place? Have they ever wondered why only developing countries are using this "ink" system and NOT developed nations like Singapore, US, Great Britain, Aus?

We are already infamous for changing national policies frequently, and most of the time, unnecessarily. I remembered very well when i was still a student, the education ministry necessitated us to speak Bahasa Malaysia baku during exams, then they changed it to Bahasa Melayu, and later they thought Bahasa Malaysia will sound better. Then we have a beautiful national song Negaraku. One day someone smart thought tat the tempo was too boring, so the entire nation agreed (no choice) to a "rock" Negaraku, then someone complained tat it's not patriotic enough so we changed our tempo again.

Is a national issue something so insignificant tat it can be changed easily every now and then so long as those in authority are happy? Do the authorities ever realize how much valuable time n money we spend every time there's any slight changes in the national policies?

I do hope they cancel this "ink mark" process ASAP, before the general election comes. If they do not cancel it now, years down the road I'm pretty sure they'll abort this system anyhow. It'll make no difference, except tat every 5 years we'll dump a few millions of ringgit into "somewhere". Anywhere.

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/2/1/nation/20194534&sec=nation&focus=1