Kuliyyah Jumaat: Menghalalkan salib

Hari ini tuan tuan dan puan puan, adalah satu hari dari hari yang mungkin paling bersejarah untuk negeri Sarawak.

Isu Al-Kitab dan hak penganut Kristian untuk mengamalkan agama mereka akan menjadi satu isu penting yang bermain di kepala-kepala pengundi negeri kenyalang itu.

Ini akan menjadi satu masalah kepada kerajaan Barisan Nasional kerana 50% pengundi di Sarawak adalah penganut agama Kristian.

Tapi yang lebih penting lagi, adalah hak pengundi di Sarawak untuk memilih siapa saja untuk menjadi ahli undangan negeri mereka.

Dengan itu, mungkin pangkahan salib di atas kertas undi pilihanraya esok adalah lebih berkuasa dari salib-salib gereja seantero dunia untuk mengubah nasib penduduk-penduduk Sarawak.

Sekaligus, SiPM ingin mengingatkan pengundi-pengundi esok bahawa pangkahan salib esok adalah halal - lebih-lebih lagi di sebelah nama calon SiPM.

*

Sorry, we have been busy. Busy laughing at all that has been happening in Malaysia.

I mean, you can't make it up. There are days when Anwar Ibrahim is a Jewish agent and there are days when he isn't.

And there are days when an * is the tipping point for a letter to editor which inter alia, says

In fact the gross error in you previously uncorrected article can be construed as an effort to derail a very important Government initiative. Such effort to derail the Government efforts to foster national unity is not only unpatriotic but downright dangerous.

We fail to understand why you feel the need to undermine a crucial Government effort to create a harmonious and united Malaysia. A responsible and credible Media organisation is one that makes all effort to improve unity and harmony and are at all times focused on the improvement of society whereas you are clearly bent on sowing discord and disunity.

But the reply skipped that point.

And I thought that was unfair to a letter crafted with care and thought by the Deputy Prime Minister's press secretary.

And I thought perhaps, I can write better than the Editor of The Malaysian Insider.

To paraphrase him, herewith my letter.

Dear Dato Ainon Mohd, Press Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister,

Thank you for your faxed statement on this matter dated August 4, 2010. The Malaysian Insider would like to apologise for the reporting error in the said article that appeared on August 3, 2010.

As a matter of policy, we add an asterisk and note below an article when it has been corrected. However, we shall accede to your wishes to remove the said asterisk, and the note that follows the asterisk.

As for your assertions - "to derail a very important Government initiative", "undermine a very crucial Government effort" and "whereas you are clearly bent on sowing discord and disunity" - I would like to say that I am not a member of a race-based party or movement or run a party-owned portal that doesn't believe in a"important Government initiative" or a "crucial Government effort".

Once again, our apologies and herewith reproduced is your letter and the transcript.

PS. I didn't want to correct the grammar in your letter because that would be censorship or clarifying what you meant when it was actually a correction.

PS2. I used PS because I know you don't like asterisks.

PS3. Is a very good gaming device.

A tight race

It was a tight race, with many saying it was too close to call.

And close it was too, but in the end, the BN candidate P. Kamalanathan won with a majority nearly ten times larger than the late PKR MP of Hulu Selangor won in the 2008 General Election.

But then, a close analysis of the number of votes (compared to the 2008 GE) shows that PKR garnered an additional 200 votes while BN gathered an additional 2000 votes. It does seem that the winning majority came from these additional voters since the last GE, all things being the same.

While SiPM (M) has indicated that no matter who won, the Hulu Selangor constituents won big in an election where both BN and PKR put up candidates of caliber, the campaigning was still marred by overzealousness of the Dirty Tricks Dept from both parties.

BN played on the fact that Zaid Ibrahim used to consume alcohol and owned race horses, while PKR chose to cast doubt on P. Kamalanathan's degree from Edith Cowan University. Both were factual, Zaid did use to partake of the amber fluid and the MIC man did get his degree from Edith Cowan, through a 3+0 twinning programme with Olympia College.

It is this reliance on dirty tricks which indicates the lack of maturity of political campaigning in Malaysia, be it a by-election or a general election. A more productive campaign would be to question the candidates on the issues of the day, rather than their personal traits.

Instead, what we saw was the usual denigration of attributes which really meant nothing about the man itself, perpetrated by both PKR and BN in equal measure. SiPM (M) thinks this needs to stop, as we gear ourselves for the next by-election in Sibu, Sarawak. Let that be about real issues, issues an MP is supposed to be handling as he's elected to the federal Parliament.

Let us learn from these lessons, as we move on to the 11th by-election since GE12 in Sibu. It's a different ballgame over there, with the Sarawakians taking their state-hood much more seriously than any one in the peninsular can claim to. It would be an election where, hopefully, the issues rule and where once again both DAP and BN put up candidates of caliber for the electorate to pick from.

And once again, SiPM (M) says, it's tricky.