It's the General Elections Again!

Both the state and the federal cafallbinets has been dissolved and everyone in the country is geared up for the General Election which will fall on the 9th. o next month. As is to be expected this will be a decisive event that will shake the history of this country as the ruling party that has been in power since independence over sixty years ago is the verge of being wiped out. I sense there will be some violence to look forward to as there has been already heated war of words from both sides of the divide and the majority of those who cares about the fate of the nation is up and awaken thanks to the Media especially the Internet. This GE will see more involvement of the younger generation of voters as a result of the exposure of direct information through the online media. Practically nothing is sacred nor secret anymore as all is out in the open.

As always, the racial prejudices and fear cards are being played to the maximum by all parties in the bid to garner support and bribes of all kinds are being offered sometimes blatantly out in the open.The opposition parties, a coalition of parties led by the former prime minister Tun Mahathir among others is all out to topple the ruling party led by Najib Tun Razak, the incumbent prime minister. Najib was Mahathir's mea culpa, an error that has cost the nation a whole lot of grief especially economically. The government under Najib has nothing but shame to the nation in the eyes of the world says Mahathir through so many unresolved scandals and mismanagement. Now the king maker is out to destroy his protege one way or another. The former prime minister of 22 years is planning to do this with the backing of all his former enemies and friends alike as the opposition bloc is made up of the primarily non Malay parties of the predominantly Chinese DAP and other minority groups.

Like most, politics is never my cup of tea and thus far I have voted in three GE in my life ever since I returned to this country. It was not that i had no interest whatsoever as to what happens in the governing of my country, it was more of a disgust at the manner of the politicians taking advantage and never keeping their words of promises to the nation after being elected. Most acted with impunity as though they are above the law; some are evidently. I grew up in a house that was the headquarters for ruling party way back in the fifties and sixties and even as a child it turned my stomach to watch the politicians maneuver and manipulate the others to their advantage. I always thought the politicians were no better than prostitutes or worse. Hence I steered clear of politics and having left the country for a long time, it never caught a hold of my attention until I returned to Terengganu. It was in Kuala Terengganu that I was persuaded to register as a voter by an elderly lady, my next door neighbor.

When the former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim gave a talk in 1998, just before he was arrested for his infamous sodomy chargers, I was there among the crowd sitting on a wall fence of a nearby house getting all riled up with the man. The talk was held at a residence located along the beach area at Batu Buruk as he was not welcomed to give any speech anywhere legal by the state government. I was a witness by chance as i was eating at one of the stalls nearby and was told that the man was going to give a speech at the nearby location. I never knew the man except by reading about him now and then in the News overseas. I bought a book him once, I think it was," The Malay Renaissance ' or something like that and donated it to the public library at the Sendai International Center, in Sendai Japan and this was in 1996-7. Beyond that I had no interest in who he was. However his oratory power got to me and moved me to take the political scene of my country more seriously.

Politics is a necessary evil just as money is and they walk hand in hand, I had the opportunity to attend several rallies organized in Anwar's favor ever since and was impressed by his charisma. I once wrote to him about doing a clean up job on the Sungai Pinang River in Penang while I was still living in Japan and got a reply through his secretary. The letter was addressed to the then Chief Minister of Penang demanding that the CM office reply my request and have as carbon copy of the reply sent to his office, that of the deputy prime minister of Malaysia. I never received any reply from the CM until my return to Malaysia and made a phone call from my nephew's office in KL demanding what happened and was told by his secretary that the CM was drafting the reply to my letter and will mail it soon. This was after months of silence and after I told her not to bother mailing it to Japan as i was going to personally pick it up when I return to Penang I got the reply almost the same day by courier from Penang to KL: my faith in politicians again took a dive.





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