My P44 0808 Experience

yosh! been a while. been rather occupied lately. set up an own business. yadaydadyadaydaydada...

so, the 26th of august signified a new beginning for some of us, or maybe 60,000 at least (roughly the number of people gathered at Maktab Tgk.Bainun for the results announcement). DSAI won with a slightly bigger majority than his wife. Not suprising. Arif Shah did mention confidently before that he'd win with a majority of 500-5000. Duuhh. KJ, Najib, Pak Lah... all made disillusioned statements regarding the chances of BN winning. KJ as usual was the mad dog barking uncontrolably. Najib swore, Saiful swore. Both sides came in full force with big guns intensively pushing their limits campaigning (include blackmailing, money politics & misuse of government funds & facilities for BN).

We arrived on Sunday ,around noon, at Galeri Pejuang in front of Anwar's kampung. The birthplace of Reformasi. Took some pics, then moved on looking for PKR's command center (Yayasan Aman) for info. We made a detour to... erm... can't remember the name but was a place reformist came by and gathered. Had lunch... and searched for Yayasan Aman. To be frank... i am not a PKR member. Nor any political party at that. I was only involved during the first wave of reformasi... when i was way younger. Even then we knew the relevancy of reform. Time flew by, people aged, and people grew wiser. I was expecting to see some old faces... friends from student years... but searched and looked in vain. Maybe they were preoccupied with work... maybe they were there but didn't have the luck to meet. Who knows, maybe most of 'em have become complacent with life.

Sunday was a day spent following the tracks of DSAI, Izzah, Fuziah and others. As usual,i can't remember each and every location we stopped by. It took me a whole day to familiarize P44's geographical situation, the following days were made much easier. Sunday ended with a massive ceramah at Padang Ibu, somewhere in P44. Shamsul Iskandar, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, Mahfuz Omar, and that Imam from Masjid Wilayah (his bodyguards were more than DSAI's!!) heated up the night before DSAI made his appearence. They were all witty, crowd wooing and played with popular issues. I really liked Mahfuz's story; he approached Shahrir at Parliaments lobby and said BN's is hanging on just ONE lifeline left... and Shahrir asked what it was... Mahfuz answered : Bungkuk Saiful!!! Hahaha! was funny to me at least. The might and power of the current ruling government was dependent on Saifuls ass. Amazing.

We spent the night at one of Anwar's cousins place in... erm.. Kubang Semang or was it Kubang Ulu... The host was friendly and soooooo family like, i plan to pay my debts to them later on as a show of gratitude. Its people like our hosts that show us that politics is not just for people interested, reform is a general agenda, disregarding your background, religion, political beliefs... we were welcomed with no questions asked.

Monday was spent at Permatang Pasir, PKR N9 was stationed there. The N9 were at par with PKR Ampang, Wilayah... all were aggressive and committed. However permatang Pasir was considered a safe spot, compared to Seberang Jaya... BN's fortress. Flyers, circulars and handouts distrubuted to passerbys to disperse information. 3 rounds of culaan were done by the N9 team... roughyl showing a 3:1 ratio favoring DSAI. Never satisfied with safe numbers, the N9 PKR relentlessly continued campaigning for voters... no number is considered as safe knowing BN's dirty strategies. Proven to be true, the whole day saw convoys of 5-6 FRU trucks carrying grimacing personal circling Permatang Pasir over and over. What the heck, to make it up, i smiled seeing the BN team getting a tongue lashing from some locals. Some were even shoooed away. : ) Looks like BN is experiencing what WE felt in the early eyars of Reformasi.

Took a break and met up with a long time friend. Haven't met her for.... years, more than 6 years i believe. She was one lady friend i'd always keep by my side (no matter what my wife says). We did have a fling together when we were younger (before knowing my wife) but as time flew, we were closely bonded friends thru hard times and good times. She told me of the current developments and politically related stuff. Got some info from her that BN was organizing a gathering at a named hall... summed up our greetings and updated our lives... and went away to the mentioned hall.

Was lively, stalls selling various edibles... went inside and asked around... saw some banners... Tekun Nasional was offering loans amounting to RM3000 on the spot to locals for entrepreneurship purposes. Noh Omar's unsightly face decorated the banner. Couldn't risk taking pictures, would be sniffed out immediately since i was sure Noh's people were definitely around monitoring the event. Pushing my luck, i went to the counter and presented my IC. The lady at the counter said the scheme was only for locals, asked her (without blinking an eye) what if i bring some voters to apply for the loan? She said there should be something they could work out. She explain further that if DSAI lost, there was no need for repayment. How i envy Permatang Pauh people. Went to a few more functions organized by BN escorted by a local... one function attended by Najib increased compensation from RM1000... to RM24000... i really envy Permatang Pauh people (later that day i understood it went on national TV, Najib sure has no shame). I heard more similar news from various other locations. Some might be true, some might not, but from what i've seen with my own eyes... there's a high possibility most of them are true since BN is in a very desperate situation.

It was planned later that night to attend DSAI's ceramahs (last night of campaigning). 8.30pm - Taman Ciku, 9.30 - Simpang 4, 10.00pm - Jalan Baru. Opted for Jalan Baru since we estimated the journey to be longer (the police were crazy about road blocks that night, i believe they have now upgraded roadblocks to a fetish level). In the end, after dinner, all of us were exhausted, and slept till the wee hours of the next morning.

I woke up an hour before subuh. Realized some brothers were up and praying to Allah of the causes success. Joined them. I too believe humans have a mental and physical limit to our efforts... now its up to divine intervention.

We decided at breakfast to join PKR Seberang Jaya, UPU Sek. Seberang Jaya 2... a well known hot spot... maybe the hottest for P44. Signed the log book and went our way to Sek Sbrg Jaya 2. Fellow reformist were already there, and the PKR personal have been up and buzzing since last night (for two weeks actually). Kudos to all Petugas2, they worked their asses off and they deserved victory. Hats off to them!!! Supporters of both sides were on opposing sides of the road. Throughout the day there were a few scuffles as obscenities and name calling became more frequent.

I'll show some pics of near head to head battles (most of them provoked by BN supporters). Don't believe me? look carefully at the following picture. Imagine pre-puberty kids definitely paid by BN, provoking, insulting and taunting PKR members headed by immature people or samseng kampung (also paid by the hour i guess),adults who have less than half a brain of the kids they lead. This is the BANGSA MELAYU umno and BN are grooming and so proud of. This is exactly what UMNO and BN want, stupid ignorant servants. It has been this way for 50 years, and if let be, will continue forever. It saddens me to see these young kids being manipulated by BN. I mean, how low can you get? Umno shouldn't let kids do grown ups work. Especially things they don't comprehend. Then again, most Umno members can't comprehend shit. No wonder they substituted kids.

Owh, Najib came by, so did KJ. Both showed up and left like rats, chased away by PKR supporters. Najib was thrown with bottles, the media reports were true. What the media didn't show was how cowardly both Najib and KJ were, being shooed and booed away. Najib was even showered with shouts of "Altantuya!!!".

A lot of Pakatan Rakyat leaders came to Seberang Jaya. KJ MP, Dr. Hatta, Brother Gopalakrishnan, Izzah, Abg Shamsul Iskandar, Brother Tian Chua...

Took some pic's with them but hell, i'm not gonna post them here! Besides escorting them along the road,also went searching for registered voters who haven't voted. Made friends with a local PKR member who drove me around. Thanks a bunch!!! Most of the registered voters, already voted once i got to them. All thumbs up, most voted DSAI.

Escorting Tian Chua was relatively easy,despite being called Tauke Babi by BN supporters, he remained nonchalant. Escorting hot headed PKR supporters deemed a much heftier job. Angry people are not easy customers. Had to make sure they were out of harms way before letting them go. Imagine, even a spark of trouble, it'll result in our disadvantage... no matter who started the ruckus. After a few scuffles, the FRU came around 4pm rushing like there was an all out riot. Six lorries came, but after years of experience the PR group knew what to do and how to do it. The front line sat down peacefully, managed to get some media (independent of course) upfront... and some members of the public even took pictures with the red eyed angry looking FRU personal.

All in all it was uneventful except for Mr. Gobalakirshnen's detention, for preventing alleged phantom voters. That came out in papers too i heard.

That night we opted to wait for results at Maktab Tg Bainun. There were more people than there was during nomination i'd dare say more than 50,000 were there. People parked on the highway, we even had to walk about 2.5km to get to the field. Geuss what, NO BN SUPPORTERS WERE TO BE SEEN. Not even one. How humuliating when its obvious BN is just a rhetoric and seemed more irrelevant by the day. Even supporters show no support. That, or they were afraid of being stepped on by PR supporters.

Anyways, thats sums about everything. Some details are left out intentionally.... hey who said only mainstream media had the right for censorship?