Curse of Batu Sapi haunts MP Tsen

Barisan Nasional’s unkept promises are a letdown to Batu Sapi residents.

BATU SAPI: There’s a curse in Batu Sapi. It’s called “Jinx Kutuk” and is closely linked to “Janji Kosong” or empty promises.

Strange as it may sound, the latest victim of the curse was Barisan Nasional’s Linda Tsen, who was elected last year amidst many pledges of new projects, repairs and developments.

She was thrust into the spotlight when the Batu Sapi parliamentary seat fell vacant following the death of its MP Edmund Chong, who was Tsen’s husband.

Banking on sympathy votes, BN fielded Tsen against PKR’s Ansari Abdullah and Sabah People’s Progressive Party (SAPP) president Yong Teck Lee.

The strategy coupled with the prevailing discord (at the time) among Pakatan Rakyat partners – PKR, DAP and SAPP – gave BN the seat with a whopping 6,359 vote majority.

Ansari earned 2,427 votes against Yong’s 1,306. The Batu Sapi incident is still a sore point with Yong who believes that had it been a straight fight the opposition would have won.

But since then nothing seems to have moved here until Oct 16 when the “curse” gave way from under Tsen, plunging her into the sea at high tide.

The “curse” in this instance was a dilapidated and rotting jetty on which Tsen stood during her visit to her constituency.

Tsen was not alone. There were six other people on that bridge. Three plunged with her.

A wet and dishevelled Tsen walked back to her car, still stunned from the incident.

Come November 2011, it will be a year since Tsen was elected. And like many of her predecessor’s promises, her pledges too have not been fulfilled.

BN’s ‘empty promises’

Local villagers who witnessed her plunge immediately recalled an incident during the by-election campaign period when Ansari also fell into the sea when the jetty he was on collapsed.

Ansari fell, not once but twice, and at two different locations within the Batu Sapi constituency.

At the time, the villagers blamed the poor conditions of the jetties on the government and the neglect of the elected representatives.

The prompt reply from Tsen annd visiting government ministers, at the time, was that the government will get down to repairing the old jetties and bridges immediately.

Ironically all of Batu Sapi’s elected representatives are from the BN coalition.

And they had all pledged hundreds of millions of ringgit for repairs and construction of new bridges.

But with BN, “empty promises” are a norm.