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| This is not an artist impression it is just another view |
Now after all that and the joint pains, the sun burn, the back aches on this already darkened body of mine and almost extreme fatigue, I am indeed glad and now I realise and know what sacrifice really means, it is an enjoyment of a suffering because you it is a suffering for not just a noble cause but something even higher, you want to do it, and need to do it and undergo that suffering for your own peace of mind, and the betterment of others other than yourself.
I thank God for this opportunity for this sacrifice which I truly believe I dedicate to our Children and I know many of those who were there many even older than me will feel the same.
Still tired I have decided to write to let you all, to share what happened and what I observed, it is on all the blogs, and yes Malaysiakini is free today read it and you'll find more. Read the other blogs too get a better understanding of the Significance of this day the march to the "New Merdeka Rakyat."
To sum it up the Rally was a success a tremendous success, and it is an indication that our journey to Putrajaya is succeeding we'll be there before this time next year and that is not too far away, only that as Najib trembles and Mahathir loses sleep over Anwar they seem to be delaying it as much as possible.
Najib returned from a rally at Tesco Symineyh yesterday where he was greeted I am told by a massive crowd of 300 guests I did not miss any zeros so I'll let you know again, yes, three hundred people, right now as I write he is at the Chitty Padang in Klang, close to the Indian Pathar (jewelers) shops, (where Rosmah can "shop") and there is no crowd, execpt that today is Sunday, and on Sunday's Jalan Tengku Kelana is crowded with Indian shoppers, this Sunday being close to Thaipusam there will be more.
All the Churches in the vicinty are having Sunday services and Sunday School, and it is jammed even without him having to be there. In all there are 7 Churches including the Gospel Hall most almost opposite the Padang, and the furthest about a five minute walk so don't get your numbers mixed up to add to it there is huge Hindu Temple on the fringes of the Padang. I ma from Klang so I can give you the details pretty accurately.
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| Birds eye view |
I promised I'd try and give you feeds as it happened, but for some apparent reason my I pad's cellular service was turned off.
My apologies for not giving you live feeds, it was a great rally a really great rally. And so even though I am really tired I decided I'd write.
A lesson form the rally
Hishamuddin to be taken to task.
In one of my previous articles I asked for sacking of Hishamuddin Tun Hussein Onn and I was not wrong, I have been proven right this man is really and truly as I always mention on this blog, "less intelligent."Before I could put pen to paper Gobind Singh Deo has don it , but that shall not stop me from writing this.
The less intelligent Minister of Home Affairs, the cousin of the Prime Minisiter Najib Bin Tun Razak, the Son of one of our previous Prime Minister's Tun hussein Onn, and the grandson of the man credited with the formation of UMNO Hishamuddin Hussein Onn will have a lot to answer for and learn from this rally. he has to be held accountable too, he is a Minister and the blame falls more than just squarely on him it falls totally on him
At Bersih 2 he refused us the use of Merdeka Stadium, he had the entire place closed up like a war zone, with fully armed FRU units, with barbed wire blocking all entrances to the stadium and so the people had to gather elsewhere, around in the streets only to be attacked by the Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) they even attacked people in the Tong Shin Hospital, the entrance into KL Central from Brickfields was so heavily tear gassed no one could get in and I'll bet all on his orders, that is now apparent he wanted or hoped to whip the rakyat into submission and how miserably he failed and yet he blamed it on the Rakyat, peaceful people who came to protest the excesses of the Government of which he is a serving minister and of course the electoral rolls, the electoral lists, phantom voters etc, more so Good Governance.
Hismuddin blamed the people for being the aggressors and how could they?
We had in the crowd not only elderly men but more so elderly women, young girls, ladies of all ages and their numbers matched the men if it didn't exceed them.
We are Malaysians, he probably is not, we will not risk the safety of our girls, our sisters, our mothers and grandmothers to have the police spray us with chemically laced water, and charge us with toxic tear gass.
His denials that the police went into the hospital was disputed by the daughter of his real boss and Mahathir bin Mohammed and even Mahathir's claims of that rally fell to nought when his daughter marina came out and contradicted them.
Yesterday's rally was how peaceful a a rally of Malaysians can really be, at the end of it the organizers thanked the Police, the people passing the police station sang and praised the police they waived at the police and the Police waved back so it could not have been the Police the buck stops at the top and so Hishamuddin has to take the blame and be accountable to all those who were hurt and some even fatally during those two rallies.
If this government is really serious about the people, Hishamuddin Hussein Onn should be sacked for such reckless behavior coming from the Minister of Home affairs of all people, and even before this rally he came out trying to get it stopped for ll sort of reasons that linger in that less intelligent head. If he had his way it would have been another mess.
As usual Barisan Nasional always get's it wrong
The others in government thought that by using what they deemed reverse psychology they'd thin out the response, well they were wrong very very wrong and it is good because they now know that people are serious.
Surprisingly today 'The Star' comes out with a headline article and true picture of the event, they hardly gave the event any publicity before the event, wonder why they came in after it had all happened.
The MIC on the other hand tried to show Najib they could help him outdo the Peoples Uprising Rally so they prepared the Ponggol rally at the Chetty stadium today, and the IPF had another similar rally at the Tesco in Syminyeh and just like a dying man clinging on to a straw, the Prime Minsiter tried his luck with this what he calls the fixed deposit of the Barisan Nasional - the Indians, but yesterday they declared at the stadium that they are now the fixed deficit of the BN and they proved it at his two rllies, the Indians are no fools.
Nobody want's a government that gives you RM500 as BRIM after 55 years and then uses AES to draw that money back hundred thousand times over.
The Rally demonstrated that we are really one people and one Nation
Yes indeed this was the peoples uprising rally, whist this rally was going on Najib was being entertained by about 300 people from the IPF but they were not all Indians a good number were onlookers who were shopping at the Tesco in Syminyeh what a pathetic respone for the Prime minister and even as I write it they have jammed up the always jammed Jalan Tenku Kelana (especially on Sundays and more so close to Indian festivals) to demonstrate to the whole world how the crowds thronged the street to catch a glimpse of Najib or is it Rosmah shopping at the Indian Pathars (jewelers) in Tengku Kelana.When the PM's presence could not even muster one percent of the rally at the Merdeka Stadium it says a lot. When the PM has to pay to get a crowd it says a lot, it is no secret that charted buses on UMNO's or the governments expense are used to gather crowds and each attending member is paid a sum of money and even promised and extended trip like the one to Melaka where the bus met with an accident, it shows that the people even the UMNO supporters have no real love for this Government..
The crowd responded with cheers acknowledging their intention to pay and pay they did, money was collected in plastic bags and I am sure that collections was huge.
Earleir Hadi had informed the crowd that to rent the stadium in Kota Baruk Kelantan, controlled by PAS it would only cost eight hundred ringgit, but the Merdeka Stadium (a stadium that is hardly used today because of Mahathir's dreams of destroying this icon of our independence and replace it with his Commonwealth Stadiums, and to push further out the contributions of Tengku Abdul Rahman and try and claim the title of "Bapak Malaysia" for himself) charged the organisers more than a hundred thousand ringgit.
The Crowd.
Each time there is a function of this kind there are disputes about the numbers, but let me take you through this.
This Stadium was built for an initial capacity of 25,00 people, it proved to be too small and that was increased to about thirty thousand and it was mainly used for football matches. Remember that it was the home groudn for all the matches played by Selangor in the Malaysia Cup, and it used to be sellout each time Selangor played its arch rival Singapore, it used to be jam packed and the press in those days used to put the figure at 40,000 so although it was supposedly built for 30,000 it can seat 40,000 people.*
Looking at yesterday"s crowd that was about forty thousand, on the stands, I was at what used to be called the VI stands because of its proximity to the Victoria Institution, and saw the crowd from that point, I later walked to the middle of the field and took a look all around the field was full of people the field alone can take at least another forty thousand people so give and take we'd have had at least 80,000 people ant the estimate of the police were correct, but what ever happened to the counter on the stills that used to used to give actual numbers?
Outside the Stadium stretching close to the Pudu Jail on one end and right down to the Old ACA (BPR) now known as the MACC headquarters there were people, that would have been been close to between 60 - 80 thousand if not more so that gives us a conservative total of 140,000 people, but what ever the number the sheer crowd spoke for itself, this was not a paid cows but a paying crowd and a responsive crowd too, we have seen paid cows elsewhere.
Lim Guan Eng, Hadi and Anwar Ibrahim addressed the crowds, and each time they shouted Merdeka the crowd responded Rakyat, on the completion of his speech Anwar did the Merdeka 7 times and the crowd responded 7 times.
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| These Hatters just refused to reveal their age. |
The Tok Guru led the closing prayers, people of other faiths were seen with heads bowed praying their own way signing the kind of unity this country needs.
The Peoples Merdeka declaration was read out and amongst them was to wipe out corruption, cronyism and nepotism in government.
Anwar issued a warning to the elections commission not to do anything to undermine the ballot box as he woudl be held fully accountable.
Guan Eng assured the crowd that none of the Pakatan candidates had permanent resident status in Australia or other countries, he took at swipe at Chua Soi Lek not mentioning the minster but saying he was a Minister of Health and it was not Chua Jui Meng.
The mood was set for Putrajaya, the crowd was set for Putrajaya, and the response by people o fall raes was set for Putrajaya, it was a singular voice the people are fed up, jsut plain fed up and they want change, it is hear at their doorstep.
The majority were Malays, followed by the Chinese and a smattering of Indians and others a truly Malaysian crowd, represented by the various parties, NGOs, and other organisations, including the MTUC.
The MTUC representative declared that the organisation is apolitical and that the MTUC woud lsupport any candidate who was labour friendly. he noted that under the Barisan Government only eight percent of the workers are unionised an this is very low when compared to with even the developed countries.
Th elaws of this country he noted does not favour the workmen, an dthat under th Barisan Governemnt worker representation has deteriorated over the years.
Abiga was given a rousing welcome in her speech she too said bersih was apolitical, and that what was required was clean and fair elections, to he shouts of ini kali la.
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| The Johor Group, UMNO members present faces blurred |
*I do not claim to be an authority but just to share. I have been for the football matches in the Merdeka stadium right from the days of Arthur Koh, Stanley Gabriel, Sexton Lourdes, Abdul Ghani Minhat one of the best forwards this country ever produced, during the days of Tengku, and later when during the time Harun Idiris was the manager of Selangor and we had the likes of Mokhtar Dhari, Soh Chin Aun, Santokh Sing and the late Arumugham in goal, even later with the likes of Wong Hang Nam, Jeyabablan and the rest and later after having moved to Shah Alam where the initial crowd used to be 80,000 this numbers fell miserably after allegations of match fixing.
The Merdeka Stadium was the venue of the Merdeka Tournament held annually, it was recognised as the unofficial Asian Football Championships, we used to constantly challenge Korea for that title, Burma now Myanma used to perform well to having reach the finals in a couple of occasions, after the Tengku the Government this very Barisna Gvernment gave scant regard to the tournemanet and the standard of our game suffered, under Mahahtir even the football team had to comprise Malays, this was revealed to me by Raja Nasrom during the early days of NASMA.
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