BN lacks substance in rebuttals over polling day and other matters

Putrajaya has finally declared May 9 as a public holiday for all Malaysians after much criticism from members of the public.

Immediately after it was announced, my handphone kept buzzing non-stop for at least 15 minutes, with netizens forwarding the breaking news.

This brings to mind what caretaker deputy home minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed had said barely 24 hours earlier, that there is "no need to declare May 9 a public holiday to allow people to vote.”

Another Umno leader Anina Saadudin had even cited religious grounds to justify the Election Commission’s pick of May 9, but when I read her rationale, I could not help but ask why it could not be on May 5 (being a Saturday) instead.

That May 9 is now declared a public holiday shows that caretaker prime minister Najib Abdul Razak had not been very sensitive towards the people’s sentiments, and he certainly did not foresee that it would receive a backlash from the rakyat.

The last-minute decision to declare May 9 a public holiday clearly shows that the entire BN government had not given enough thought about the polling date; instead, they were merely reacting to situations.

Since the date was announced, nearly everyone that I knew was angered by the decision to pick Wednesday as a polling day. No amount of cajoling, even by Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin, could help the people’s grumbling subside.

Loss of productivity for companies and the inconvenience to the voters has certainly put voters now at odds with the incumbents in Putrajaya.

Within just a span of 24 hours, over 115,000 people signed a petition to urge the Yang di-Pertuan Agong to declare May 9 a public holiday.

Yet, the rebuttals that we read from Umno leaders appear to be lacking in substance. This has been my observation in at least a few other incidents within the past one week which suggest that BN leaders lack substance in their rebuttals.

For example, before the official campaigning period for the general election had started, BN had already started putting up flags in a number of places.

When the flags were being discarded by angry Malaysians, all that Umno leaders such as Bukit Bintang Umno Youth chief Jefree Zaid Affendi Dan Yunan could do was to issue threatscalling this an “act of provocation (that) could lead to a tense situation”.

In the first place, the flags should not be up unless there is an event in a certain location. If not removed by the angry citizens, these flags should be removed by the local councils.

Jefree said that there is there a need to “compete in a healthy manner” but I wonder if he even realises that the man caught in a video is apparently not a politician. What competition therefore is he referring to?

Then, there is the incident when caretaker Selangor menteri besar Azmin Ali returned the official vehicles to the state secretary. All that Selangor Umno deputy information chief Mat Nadzari Ahmad Dahlan could say was that Azmin had put on a “stunt”.

What is worse is when Selangor opposition proposed to abolish the “No Plastics” policy if they came into power in Selangor! That to me, if implemented, is regressive.

And now, they are going to give incentives to people who bring their own recycled bags. 

As a consumer, we do not really need to have 20 sen and for goodness sake, how are you going to monitor the merchants who claim that they have given out, say, RM10,500.20 for the month, when there is hardly any foolproof mechanism to monitor the integrity of the people working at the counter?

---

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.  - Mkini