BN’s nonsense continues…

There are many examples to show that the BN camp wil always engage in nonsense.

COMMENT

Now that Parliament has been dissolved, one can expect more slick tricks executed by Barisan Nasional’s lackeys.

A journalist reported in Harakah ( April 5-7) that in Kedah for the past one month or so, many people there have been getting what can be termed as a “mysterious phone call”.

A sweet female voice will introduce herself as a researcher and then proceed to ask which is the keyword that is the easiest to remember among these three keywords: Najib, 1Malaysia or Barisan Nasional.

Before ending the call, the researcher will ask whether BN can win in the locality where the recipient of the call is staying.

Many people complained that the call sounds like coercion and seems to be an indirect threat as the caller has obtained their personal details and address.

And this is also said to be happening in Penang, too.

Still on Kedah, in Kuala Kedah, BN has started the “ceramah kelompok” (political speeches to small groups). Now in these ceramah, there is always a presence of a group called “Group 36”. The name is given to this group by the local residents as these 36 people are the same loyal 36 people always attending these ceramah organised by BN.

Besides the above participants, many young men have also been asked to wear BN’s T-shirts to popularise BN. These youths will get between RM20 and RM50 for doing so besides being given money for filling up petrol for their bikes.

Many of these young men are unemployed and BN should have done something more for them such as sending them to skills training courses instead of letting them waste their time in this manner.

Interviewed by Harakah, one of these young men replied, “Apa yang mereka cakap pun kami tak dengar dan banyaknya kami tak faham.” (What BN leaders say in the ceramahs, we also can’t hear and much of it we don’t understand.)

Another type of nonsense orchestrated by BN is the sending of unsolicited text messages to the citizens. These text messages insult Pakatan Rakyat and Pakatan leaders.

If Pakatan supporters respond to these text messages by scolding the unknown sender, then the sender will know that the person is a Pakatan supporter. Therefore, the respondent should not be surprised to find his name missing/sent to a remote faraway location on polling day.

DAP Klang MP, Charles Santiago, and PKR Lembah Pantai MP, Nurul Izzah Anwar, have both failed in their legal action initiated against the Election Commission (EC) pertaining to the electoral roll and this shows that the EC is above the law.

PAS Shah Alam MP, Khalid Samad, commented that “all this just goes to show that the integrity of the EC is questionable. The countless reports made in Selangor by PAS concerning dubious names in the electoral roll have also been totally ignored by the EC. Is EC still upholding the democratic process?”

Free and clean elections?

Khalid also said that by now all right-thinking citizens are already doubting whether the 13th general election will be free, fair and clean or will it live up to its billing as the dirtiest in Malaysian history.

He also took the EC to task for lying that it has not received Nurul Izzah’s complaint about 4,637 dubious voters when the list of dubious names had been stamped “acknowledged receipt” by a senior EC officer named Nur Izdiyani on March 5.

Together with EC, another group of people who are also above the law is none other than Umno supporters.

Last month in Batu Gajah, Perak, Umno supporters who caused a ruckus in a PAS ceramah were not stopped by the police.

Prior to that incident, PAS member Rosdy Abdullah had received information that a group of Umno’s youths had wanted to disrupt the PAS ceramah. Rosdy quickly made a police report urging the police to act fast to stop the Umno youths. Instead, the police wanted to negotiate with an Umno politician in the area.

Rosdy said that “by negotiating with Umno it shows as if the power to control the peace and security belongs to the Umno leaders”. Rosdy also questioned why the police seemed powerless to stop the hooligans.

Also in the news on Perak, the PAS trailer named “Optimus Prime” in its journey in Perak from March 26 to 29 has been stopped by police in at least four roadblocks. At one of the roadblocks even the Road Transport Department officers were there. The trailer crew and Harakah journalists then had their MyKad particulars taken down by the police.

The PAS trailer is currently on a tour called “Jelajah Negara Berkebajikan” which started on Feb 22.

From the above examples highlighting disturbances by BN people, it can be clearly seen that they have always and will always engage in nonsense.

Therefore the time has come to put an end to their nonsense once and for all. Isn’t that what we right-thinking citizens should do?

Selena Tay is a DAP member and a FMT columnist.