A Lesson for All

We can all learn a very important lesson from the just-concluded Malaysian General Elections: When you have been in leadership for a very long time and think you are very strong and invincible because of the kind of support backing you, unexpectedly, the carpet will be pulled quickly from under you, and you will fall -- and it will be an undignified fall!

See what has happened to the seemingly unsinkable Barisan Nasional. Overnight, the support that kept them in power for 50 years since independence vanished -- gone, kapputz! They are still reeling from the shock of realising that the support they assumed actually wasn't there.

Some people refer to it as the Hand of God. If it indeed is, He has definitely showed His displeasure and changed the status quo in one fell swoop! Woe on those who resisted! Look how many of them have fallen!

But, I don't think that this wind of change that is blowing through the country is as sudden as people make it out to be. The rumblings of dissent -- sure signs that things are not quite right -- have been there for a while. But, they were ignored, preempted and/or suppressed. And, that was the problem.

Leaders lost touch with the grassroots. They failed -- mainly because they distanced themselves from the people -- to read the signs correctly and early enough to correct themselves and change. They resisted, dug in their heels and entrenched themselves -- some, shamelessly, in the Name of God.

Well, it looks like God has spoken and it would be advisable for incumbent leadership -- especially the long-staying ones -- to take note of what has happened and act swiftly so that the same fate doesn't fall on them.

Recognise and welcome dissent because it offers a chance for change and rejuvenation. Instead of digging in your heels, step back, let go and surrender -- and embrace the changes. You will be showing magnanimity in leadership, something sorely missing in the leadership of today.

Open Letter to YB Hannah Yeoh

Dear YB Hannah,

Firstly, congratulations! And, it looks like the mainstream papers also like you! The Star featured you today, despite their screaming front-page story that did not make the DAP look so good!

But, back to the main purpose of this letter. I know you said that your priority would be to help the poor in the Subang Jaya state constituency. I totally support that and I think many of your constituents, would, too. However, having lived in Subang Jaya for the past 20 years, there are a number of things that need to be addressed. Let me list them down here and leave it to you to include them in your list of priorities:

1. Traffic: This is our major headache! Subang Jaya needs another exit to the Federal Highway -- not a flyover over it or through Sunway. But one to the Federal Highway near perhaps the SJMC. This will cut the number of cars from USJ using the sole exit at the former KFC. To facilitate this movement of traffic from USJ, it is also necessary to expand the Federal Highway lanes between the clock tower at Subang and Sungei Way.
2. Public Transport: This is another problem. Public transport needs to be beefed up so that the service is frequent and regular. If the LRT is going to be extended through Subang Jaya to USJ, there is a great need to establish an efficient and fast feeder bus service so that the LRT stations are not crowded with cars.
3. Stall licences: Issue more licences so that Subang Jayans can earn an honest living in Subang Jaya. Issue licences based on need rather than race. Allocate places for stall owners to operate legally without being harassed by authorities. But, when issuing stall licences, please make sure that they are not located in places where they obstruct traffic flow.
4. Security: Petty and snatch thefts are frequent occurrences here. At the risk of sounding racist, (but, in fact, I am not!) this is mainly because of the big immigrant population in the cheaper flats and apartments available in USJ which are conveniently located close to commercial centres (Please feel free to correct me!). Some kind of zoning needs to be done so that commercial centres are placed comfortably at a distance from residential areas. And, of course, we need better policing!
5. Unwanted mail: There is an unnecessary amount of junk mail stuffed in our mailboxes. I sugest that some law be introduced to stop people from cramming unwanted mail into our mailboxes!
6. RATS! This is a problem no one wants to see here! But the area, especially the drains and gutters are teeming with these creatures and their close relatives, the chipmunks! City and town councils should regularly fumigate these places so that this menace is wiped out of the face of the earth!
7. The last problem is a very, very small issue but a nagging one! Garbage collectors clean out garbage bins but they do not latch back the doors of the garbage chambers! This is an easily solved problem: Just tell them to latch back the doors!

That is all! I hope YB will do something about these frustrating aspects of living in the Subang Jaya constituency. If these issues are resolved, I think, the Subang Jaya-USJ area will be a model town for all Malaysians!

Who knows? Other towns will follow suit and before long all of Malaysia will become a progressive, safe and clean place to live in!

Good Luck!

We voted for US!

The heroes of the just completed General Elections are no others than US -- the voters! We proved we are kingmakers! And that we are mature and responsible voters ; we protested with one mind and as Malaysians, not just as Malaysian Chinese or Malaysian Malay or Malaysian Indian, and without violence.

For the first time, I am proud to be called simply Malaysian!

Now that the status quo has changed, I have something to say to the new leaders: Please don't blow it! You have been given a chance to govern. Now, prove it that you can -- and well. If you make mistakes, admit them and correct them swiftly. Don't sweep things under the carpet, and, most of all don't hide them from the rakyat. Admit, apologize, correct it and face the consequences and move on.

Voters now realise that they have power and they are going to use it. Just as you were easily put into office, you can be easily -- and unceremoniously -- shown the exit door.

Show your mettle and prove your detractors wrong!

My next post is an open letter to the new Subang Jaya YB Hannah Yeoh. It can be viewed after 6pm tomorrow.

Tip on Pictures

My pictures at night or in the dark tend to be dark even with flash because I use a simple digital camera. If you want to see clearly, click on picture and zoom in. You will get a closer and clearer view.

Stirrings of Democracy

Something is happening in the Subang Jaya state constituency where I live. Middle and upper class Subang Jayans have traditionally peacefully voted for stability in previous general and state elections. They generally stayed out of public debate and on polling day quietly voted in the Barisan Nasional (BN), the leading coalition that has ruled the country for the past 50 years.

But a fresh-faced, pretty, pint-sized, just-married woman seems to be changing all that. Content Subang Jayans are spilling out of their comfortable homes by the thousands -- in the drenching rain -- to hear what the 29-year-old Hannah Yeoh Tseow Suan has to say.

She is the Democratic Action Party's (DAP -- the leading opposition party) new candidate for the Subang Jaya state seat. She is young, inexperienced and a newcomer to politics. She joined the DAP three months ago because she felt that it was the only political party that could help serve her desire to impact society.

Then the General Election was announced and she was asked by the DAP to stand in Subang Jaya. A political novice, this former headgirl and lawyer now turned event management professional is now pulling in the crowds and setting history in motion.

Yeoh herself can't believe the response she has been getting. "I didn't expect all this (the support)," she said, her hair still wet from the rain, after a huge rally in the rain soaked football field in USJ 12 on Monday night at which party supremo, Lim Kit Siang, spoke as well.

"This is history in the making. Party people say that this has never happened before," she added. By "this" she meant the crowds and the support that the people of Subang Jaya were showing her.

The DAP's political gatherings -- ceramah in Bahasa Malaysia -- are known to be crowd-pullers. People come to hear what they do not read or hear in the news. But, the crowds have always gone to the big names at the ceramah, like Lim, his son, Guan Eng, and Karpal Singh. No one -- least of all, Yeoh herself -- expected an unknown like herself to get the public's attention in Subang Jaya like she has been getting.

Her rally on Saturday night - also at the USJ 12 football field -- attracted about 6,000 people. The Monday night ceramah was bigger. A possible reason for the surge in numbers could be that more people came to hear the elder Lim. But if the Saturday night figure was anything to go by, it meant that she was as much a draw or a sign of change of something new and better.

One of my students who lives in Subang Jaya said that her father bought numbers based on Yeoh's first name, Hannah. He matched the letters of the name in the same order to the number on his touch-dial telephone. The number won and he shared the prize money with friends and relatives!

Yeoh might be a rallying point of something bigger than herself and of something new.

Subang Jayans want to give her a chance. At her rallies they listen. There is no heckling and she offers no gimmicks, antics nor entertainment, just her simple promise: "I will speak up for you. I will stand up for you."

They listen.

"People say I am young. Yes, I am young, but I am clean!" her strident voice rang out as she declared her commitment to stay corruption-free. She has vowed to search for all the "Zakarias" (the Klang councillor who built a mansion for him and his family in a poor neighbourhood) and expose them.

"People say I am inexperienced. Yes, but my hands are untied!" And she raised both hands in the air to show she was unshackled by political patronage. "My hands are tied!" is the never-ending lament of BN politicians who, caught up by the system, don't deliver.

"People say that I may not be able to work as well because I just got married (in January). But, I know of someone who is much bigger than me who also got married recently! Why don't they say the same about him?" she answered her detractors by alluding to Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi who remarried last year! Yeoh is married to IT engineer, Ramachandran Muniandy.

Not only did Subang Jayans listen, they also gave generously. In another historical first, Yeoh's campaign officials collected RM31,000 from the Saturday night ceramah on March 1. It was the largest amount collected at any ceramah in DAP's history!

It is hard to say what is peaking the Subang Jaya electorate's interest in Yeoh. Perhaps, they are drawn to her out of curiosity because she is new and she is in the opposition. She is standing for election in a state constituency that was ably held by the Malaysian Chinese Party's (MCA -- a component party of the BN) three-term councillor Dato Lee Hwa Beng, who is now standing for election in the Kelana Jaya parliamentary constituency.

Now that Lee has moved on, Subang Jaya residents may be signalling a change. A change in the political equation. They may be ready to vote for a stronger opposition in the state assembly and they may be sizing up the new face the DAP has fielded in the Subang Jaya state constituency. And, maybe, they like what they see.

Against a lacklustre BN government tainted by the antics of its members and their relatives, Yeoh represents a breath of fresh air in a jaded administration that has gone scot-free for its excesses.

Like Subang Jaya, segments of the voting electorate have woken up and are looking for candidates in whom they can trust their votes and know that trust will be honoured. They may be willing to take the risk to deposit their trust in fresh new faces in the opposition and give them a chance at public service to provide the check and balances to the ruling party and deliver a just and fair government.

The opposition is realistic. They are aware that they do not have the support to form the next government. They just want to have more of themselves in Parliament and the state assemblies. After so many disappointments in previous elections, they dare not hope. But, seeing the groundswell in Subang Jaya, and, perhaps in other places as well, they are beginning to hope.

Subang Jaya is a state constituency, and the hope is that a vote for Hannah Yeoh will extend to a vote for the opposition in the parliamentary seats of Subang and Kelana Jaya as well.

It is in Parliament that a strong opposition is needed. In the words of the elder Lim at Yeoh's Monday night rally: "We don't want to smash UMNO (the leading political party in the BN coalition). But we want to smash UMNO's political hegemony!"

That is the clarion call of the opposition. To smash UMNO's unbridled supremacy by denying it its two-thirds majority in Parliament.

The concern is whether such a great turnout and generosity on the ground for opposition candidates like Yeoh will translate to real votes for the opposition on polling day this Saturday, March 8.

Historically, although people have flocked by the thousands to hear opposition leaders, the actual elected opposition Members of Parliament have always been less than one-third, which means the ruling government can -- and have -- steamroll any law through Parliament as they like it because they are assured of a two-thirds majority.

The question is, this time, at the 12the General Election of Malaysia, will the people hand the BN such unparalled and uncontrolled power or will they serve notice to the BN that their time is up? That their wings will be clipped? That they have to work hard to get the opposition's support to pass laws in Parliament? That they had better buck up or be voted out?!

What will we say at the polling station this Saturday? Will we maintain the status quo or will we make history and change the political quotient?

My own feelings? Let's make history!