Dinner with a Difference

Last Saturday night, I attended a dinner at Serdang courtesy of my Sis-In-Law. Apparently she bought some tickets (RM1000/table of 10pax!) for a donation drive / something (or at least tht was wht I thought). Just before the dinner, I found out it's for the DAP Cawangan Serdang's 42nd Anniversary. Ok.... it would be interesting to listen to some of the speeches (the last I heard was delivered by Tony Phua @ PJ right before the Mar'08 election), so wht the heck.

After securing our table, the speeches started. There was the President of DAP Cawangan Serdang, the Serdang rep (ppl call her "cili padi" but can't remember her name - how embarrassing...), Lim Kit Siang, Tony Phua (my favourite orator...) etc was there delivering their speeches as well.

Things got rather uncomfortable when the speeches got heated with talks on :
1. the difficulty in getting permit to organize tht function, which is a normal annual dinner kinda thing - it's not a threat to the society... A peaceful dinner & yet can't get permit, where's the logic / fairness of the police (yikes!! & I was told there were some plain-clothed special branch policemen on parole around the area)

2. the police (Again!?! I dun wanna go to jail for this!) arrested the ppl who did peaceful protests by wearing black & carrying candles on the day of Perak's State Assembly in session - to commemorate the "death of democracy". Quoting a part of the speech "Why are the policemen not out there in full force to curb the high crime rates? Catch the real ppl of threat to the society like the snatch-thieves & burglars? What is so dangerous abt ppl wearing black & carrying candles?! There was no damages to Public properties / violent retaliation on the police force. It was a peaceful protests! So, if we have power failure tht day & had to light candles & co-incidentally was wearing black, is it fair to round me up without trial?!" (at tht time I was squirming a little cos' I notice a Malay guy taking pix of our table - yikes!)

3. The Port Klang Free Zone project - some details of the contracts signed, the ballooning costs & the fact tht the company who's developing this project belongs to a politician! The statistics is just mind-boggling tht if it's a private company, such Return On Investment - ROI will cause the project to be thrown out of the window. Imagine... it's said tht :
a) with the latest RM12.5Bln investment on this project, it'll be 2045 before we actually see the return (& none of us tax payers will be alive to see the fruit of our sweat & tears!)
b) the saving from not embarking in this expensive project would allow us to get abt RM500k per person (including infants)
c) we will be able to buy up Plus / other highways & make the major roads toll-free
d) the government could have provided subsidized water / electricity / utilities
and a bunch of other statistics I can't remember (Now tht's interesting....)

4. The Plus Highway & how we are paying through our nose (sorry, was not paying much attention at this stage... it was 11.30+pm already at tht time & the hall was stuffy, with the occasional wind from a fan nearby)

5. Misuse of Public property by governing parties. Rightfully under democracy, the public land & properties does not belong to the ruling party. It belongs to the people. It can be used by the ruling party for activities tht contributes to the ppl, but if it's for the ruling party's meetings, functions etc, tht would be misuse of public property because the public has the right to charge rent for such properties... (they quoted examples, apparently there's also a case where the ruling party was using a piece of public land for development of a Fun Fare where entrance fee are imposed & generating profits for some cronies... Now tht's new... I dunno abt tht....)

And many-many more that I can't recall, but was at times a bit exaggerating (except Tony's speech. His tends to be more factual where he proves every statement he makes with statistics & explain the source of his info).

With the heated speeches, I was just amazed tht there were no forced dispersement of ppl from the site / capture of the public speakers under ISA.

To be honest, as much as I think it's a good exposure, just to know what is happening in our country, I hate to feel threatened just because I'm listening to the "opposition" (depending on which state I'm in). Whether it's lies / the truth, I belief we're smart enough to filter. Why can't there be more transparency? Just let the "opposition" talk! If they are lies - what is there to be afraid of? (Quote Mahatma Gandhi "I may look despicable, but when the light of truth shines through me, I am invincible" unquote).

If there's even a slight feeling of threat / attempt to stop such functions (even if it's in the form of not issuing permit); the more it makes us think that there is indeed some truth in the opposition speeches, that's why the effort to subdue such messages.

We're still a long way from achieving the true meaning of democracy... where voicing opinion against the ruling party is not viewed as a threat to national security tht can cause another May 13th incident (tht ppl keep harping all the time), but rather a healthy debate to ensure our country prosper.

And stop the play of races unity bullshit. There never was a rift between races. My closest friends are Malays... (ok, even if there is, it's not as serious as wht everyone is harping abt). Someone needs to wake up & realize it's not issues of the races, but there are other more fundamental concerns that transcends race / religion. Chinese / Indians / the non-Bumis alone can't do anything in an election even if we were to 100% vote for the oppositions. Some of the Bumis needs to be in there as well to over-throw the ruling party. So STOP BLAMING THE NON-BUMI as being :
1) not patriotic
2) not loyal to the government
3) "tak mengenang budi" (hello!!)
4) "if not happy - you immigrants (i.e. Malaysian Chinese / Indians) can go back to China / India!" (yea.... & the Indonesians are more than welcome to take citizenship in Malaysia... so who's the racist here?)

Opps... got a bit over-heated there; but I'm just getting fed-up tht all I hear (from both sides) are accusation, yet I still can't see what has tht benefited the public at large. Just grow up!