GE13: Australia snubs Anwar's observer bid, says report

Australia appears to have thrown cold water on an attempt by Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to get Canberra to interfere in the election process.
In response to Anwar's query on why Australia had not dispatched observers for the May 5 polls, Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr said Australia could not be a self-appointed overseas election authority for Malaysia.
He was quoted by the Australian Associated Press that there was no way "we could put ourselves in a position where we are shaping election-day practices, voting practices, in any other country".
Driving home the point that Australia was not in a position to do that, he said: "It's not Australian practice to send, unbidden, observers into a foreign jurisdiction."
The AAP report further quoted the Australian minister saying: "We can't be a sort of court of disputed returns, or election authority, election commission for another country."
Senator Carr explained Australia would only send election observers to foreign countries at the invitation of the government concerned.
Anwar was reported to have cautioned that his coalition could be prevented from winning at the polls by what he claimed as "massive fraud".
This appears to fit in with political pundits' observations that the opposition was bent on casting doubt over the integrity of the Malaysian electoral process should they fail in their bid to wrest Malaysia's administrative reins from the Barisan Nasional alliance in the upcoming polls.