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Sunday, January 13, 2013

Cops pass PR test but fluff the math



This time round, the police force passed the test of its public relations skills in handling a major protest rally. Some things do change, after all, in Malaysia.

After the PR disasters of its handling of the Bersih rallies of July 2011 and April 2012, the police tackled the ‘People's Uprising' rally that was staged at the Stadium Merdeka yesterday by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat with intelligence and restraint.

But, as if to make the point that this panache was an aberration rather than a characteristic, the force proceeded to flub its math test. It revised downwards its initial estimate of the crowd at the rally to 45,000.

One supposes it had to make things easy for its political masters.

If the police had allowed their initial estimate that the crowd in the stadium proper at the height of the rally was 80,000, then the numbers of people who were headed to the venue from multiple directions but could not get in, and the numbers massed in the parking area of the stadium would inflate the overall attendance to past the 100,000 figure.
rally people's uprising bird's eye view
So, the force had to sugarcoat things for its political commissars and revise its final estimate of the crowd to almost half its initial calculation.

When full to the brim, Stadium Merdeka, as anyone old enough to remember hockey's World Cup final in 1975 will agree, can hold 50,000 people.

If the green sward of its oval is filled with people, as it was yesterday at the height of the rally, then you can add another 30,000 to number already in the terraces.

kl rally himpunan kebangkitan rakyat 120113 policeThat would have made the 80,000 of the police force's initial estimate a credible calculation, but somewhere in its immediate post-rally cogitation of events, the force had to make things easy for its Umno masters to manipulate - it revised its estimate downwards.

The force declined the opportunity that beckoned to go the full distance in giving Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's ballyhooed ‘transformation of government and the economy' projects the bite it had lacked.

After, uncharacteristically, passing its PR test in handling the ‘People's Uprising' rally, it flunked out on its math - the better to coddle an Umno-BN neurosis.

This is that big crowds at opposition-organised rallies presage electoral reverses for Umno-BN. This was how the huge protest rallies of Bersih and Hindraf in the month of November 2007 wound up for Umno-BN at the polls in March the following year.
Electoral dice is rolling against BN

In the final lap to the country's 13th general election, a huge rally for Pakatan, seen against the backdrop of the throngs that attended the Bersih rallies of July 2011 and April 2012, will only reinforce intimations of impending electoral defeat for Umno-BN.

Never mind, such intimations have already prompted record levels ofcapital flight from the country - RM200 billion in 2010 alone, the second highest in the world after China, according to Global Financial Integrity.

The lucre accumulated by the guilty classes can be stashed abroad with impunity, although that demonstration with their wallets is actually a vote of no-confidence in their Umno-BN political patrons.

NONEBut ordinary Malaysians, attenuated from the Internet-updated world, must be told a different story about the size of opposition-inspired rallies held in the business capital of the country.

That was probably why the police had to revise their initial estimate of yesterday's crowd. They cannot be too candid when the electoral dice is rolling against their patrons.

But election pundits will make their own calculations, based on reports and videos taken of yesterday's rally. Extrapolations would be made and predictions a little more optimistic that what the chief economist of Bank Islam made at a forum in Singapore last week would be aired. The economist predicted a slight victory for Umno-BN.

The speed with which his employers dissociated the bank from the prediction was indicative of the jitters of anybody with links to the government over any action of theirs that may undermine the magnificent delusion the government wants foisted - that Umno-BN, despite inauspicious signs, will win the 13th general election.

Based on the actual turnout, not the revised one of the police, the next fortnight would see that delusion come in for severe jolting.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.

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