Sunday, November 11, 2007

Daulat Tuanku

Heh, we had our little informal gathering here in Cambridge, right outside our Senate House. Surprisingly, one of us managed to snag some kit from the gathering that they had in London, yesterday. So, we had a BERSIH t-shirt and a banner to add some yellow colour to the whole occasion.

As to the demands of BERSIH, I think that they are fairly logical and fair. I don't really understand why the election commission (SPR) doesn't take more of their ideas into advisement.

  1. Use of indelible ink
    According to the official news, the SPR has agreed to the use of indelible ink to prevent people from voting twice. I personally don't think that this is much of a deterrent as it's too easy to overcome this problem. Either way, the SPR has not purchased any indelible ink yet. Maybe they're waiting till the last minute to do this.
  2. Disallow all postal votes
    I do think that it's unfair for the law to allow some overseas Malaysians to vote while others are not allowed to. Ideally, all Malaysians should be allowed to vote, wherever they are. However, if they are going to censure some Malaysians from exercising their legal right overseas, it is only fair that they censure all Malaysians from voting overseas.
  3. Cleaning up the voter register
    Yes, we really need to fix this problem. There are too many infants and centenarians in our voter register. I didn't believe this until I actually looked up some IC numbers on our SPR website. Surprisingly, there are infants and centenarians in our voter register. If there's even one questionable entry in the list, it makes you wonder about the rest of the list, doesn't it.
  4. Free and equal access to the media
    Now, this is the real difficult bit. It's standard procedure for governments to control the media. It's how governments maintain their grip on power. However, the situation is a little sad when our mainstream media is directly owned by political parties. There isn't much that the SPR can do about this, unfortunately.
As for petitioning our King to do something, like it or not, our monarchy acts as a check and balance for our government. So, at least, the people still have an avenue to turn to when the present day government is perceived to be failing in it's duty. That's probably why the people were willing to march to the palace for a cause, a cause that resonates with everyone at home.

9 comments:

Dan said...

wah.. so few of you.. you know more peope showed up at cumas egm today to discuss a topic about you compared to the number of people showing up for a rally about malaysian politics?

you should be flattered :P

koln_auhc said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
koln_auhc said...

ouchie.

Shawn Tan said...

haha.. he scolded u for mentioning his name is it??

koln_auhc said...

yup, and he said he tak takut sial....

What A Lulu said...

:P that was so sweet of you guys to show your support
hi five!

Shawn Tan said...

hi-5 to u too!!

Anonymous said...

Fuck you chinese. the election has always been fair. There is no way you can win the election.. so dont blame the ec. and there are many more like me thats why you lose you losers..

Shawn Tan said...

hahaha!! joker.. i have personally experienced the unfairness and illegality of the process..

i don't care who wins, as long as the rules are followed.. when the government doesn't allow me to vote when the law clearly says that i'm allowed to vote, something is wrong.. our government is denying me my legal right to vote..

http://sybreon.blogspot.com/2007/08/chronicles-of-macammana.html

from your comments, i can tell that you don't really know what you're saying but are expressing your personal bias.. so, let's just leave it at that..

plus, before you brand me as anti-government or a bigot, or anything like that, i'd advise you to read the rest of my blogs first.. i'm neither..