Pakatan’s emergency Bersih meet tomorrow

KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 — The Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leadership council will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow after the Yang di-Pertuan Agong’s call for Bersih 2.0 organisers to meet with the Najib administration.

DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang said in a statement that the meeting will discuss the advice of Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin even as Bersih chief Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan said yesterday that she will cancel the July 9 rally if asked by the King.

“I am most impressed by the advice of the King, particularly when he (urged) ‘the government to carry out everything that is entrusted to it by the people in a just and wise manner... do not want to see... animosity among them or a section of the people being enemies with the government,” the Ipoh Timur MP said.

Lim insisted that the electoral reform movement was planning a peaceful rally and allegations by the police and government of reviving communism and subversion by foreign powers were simply “imaginary enemies.”

“A ‘just and wise’ government would never have allowed the situation to degenerate and descend into a national hysteria,” he added.

Immediately after Tuanku Mizan’s statement on Sunday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak offered yesterday to allow the now outlawed Bersih to gather in a stadium.

In turn, Ambiga said she would seek an audience with the King and call off the rally if asked to do so.

The atmosphere ahead of Saturday’s planned march has heightened after the government embarked on a nationwide clampdown on Bersih 2.0, hoping to block the now-outlawed coalition’s plans for its July 9 rally.

It police have made hundreds of pre-emptive arrests, raids and confiscation of rally-related materials.

The Emergency Ordinance has been used on six Parti Sosialis Rakyat (PSM) members as well.

Opposition politicians have accused the government of abusing the law to arrest activists and seize items related to the planned rally.

Both Umno Youth and Perkasa have said that they will only cancel their planned counter-rallies if Bersih stands down first.