The Election Commission has to be reformed .

I did not believe that the government won the election by unscruplous means until I received a letter from the Election Commission bearing the name of an unknown young Malay lady and having an address of our home in Shah Alam . This took place just a few weeks before the 1999 General Election . I believed that the lady was a Puteri Umno member from somewhere else who was assigned to vote in the Shah Alam parliamentary constituency . I did not know how many phantom voters like that were imported from somewhere else during that General Election .I believed the number could have been substantial so as to enable the BN candidate to narrowly win against the Keadilan candidate .That is why I am not surprised if the same tactic would be used again in the coming General Election .

Bersih - a loose coalition of NGOs and opposition political parties have been fighting very hard for the government to reform it's Election Commission so that the coming General Election would be a fair one . All their calls and memos have been received into deaf ears and no action positive was taken by the government to rectify . So , was it fair for the government to stop the masses to demonstrate and made known their grouses through street demonstrations ? The government had refused to listen and instead boasted that they did not have to demonstrate but should exercise their rights as voters in the General Election , just because they are sure of winning the election . But how can the people exercise their rights when the election is blatantly rigged ?

10th November 2007 was a sad day for the ordinary citizens of Malaysia because on that day the government used the Police to intimidate the people and had also unnecessarily used force on them who were just merely exercising their rights as per Article 10 of the Federal Constitution and Article 20 of the U.N. Human Rights Declaration . It was also amusing for the Chief Police Officer of Kuala Lumpur to come out with a preposterous statement that the Police would arrest anyone found wearing yellow shirt on that day . I do not know from where did he learned that wearing yellow was an offence . Worst still was the Minister of Information Zainuddin Maideen's telephone interview with Aljazeera TV news casters . His English was horrible and did not befit that of a Minister of this country . I just could not believe my ears and eyes when he categorically accused the Aljazeera as being bias in their reportings when actually that was the real situation . Infact it was the local TV and newspapers were the one of being unfair in their reportings when they mentioned that the crowd that took part in the demonstration were only about 4,000 (while in actual fact it was close to 50,000) and that the Police did not used force . Was it justified for the Police to fire tear gas on the peaceful demonstrators ? Some of them were even got beaten by them . Aljazeera being an independent TV station was very professional in their reportings and they would not bow down to pressures from the Minister. Bersih had done their part and I think this should be an eye opener for the government to be more responsive to the plight and grouses of the people .

The government's old tactic of suppressing fair reportings would not last long because the people are no more stupid and ignorant like those in the yester years . More and more people now have access to the internet and they gradually know the actual situation . I am not against the BN government but I believe in being fair . I am fed up with the misdeeds and wrongdoings of the government and want them rectified for the good of the nation and not to the advantage of the few privileged BN leaders .