1. Do you believe that elections are free and fair in Malaysia?

2. If you do believe elections are free and fair, what is your response to evidence gathered during the Ijok and Machap elections of vote rigging, vote buying and phantom voters?

3. If you don’t believe elections are free and fair in Malaysia, how does one ensure that it is?

4. Should we, like Nazri suggests, seek change through the ballot box? But that’s just asking me to change things through elections, which I already think are unfair: aren’t you asking me to appeal to the very thing I’m protesting against? What is your solution, then?

Those are just simple questions. The point is, elections isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a civil liberties issue. I have a right as a citizen to demand free and fair elections.

The opposition have their own agenda. No one denies this. But the opposition also have critical mass. And forcing change requires this critical mass - especially when all avenues of change have been blocked. Everything from broadcast media to rallies or responses from civil society and the opposition have been silenced.

What then is your solution? I’d like to hear it and invite you to present one.

As for the delegation that presented the memorandum to the King’s functionary, drawing conclusions with one side of the story is usually folly. Khairy Jamaluddin asks the same question in a taped debate between Malik Imtiaz, Nazri and himself for the Al-Jazeera 101East program.

You could look it up.

that statement is nothing more than political tactic made up by the opposition, a cunning and manipulative one. the obvious outcome of such rally is more ppl voting for the opposition. and you all would hv just played into their hands.
they hype the crowd with feel good statements, use the king (who was horse riding in trengganu tht day) to raise the emotions of these pawns , instructed their members (the bulk of protesters) to not waive party flags to reinforce their claim tht this is a rakyat rally not a political one, repeatedly harp on all the bad things BN has done ( which they have - yes im not a BN supporter) , with the extensive news coverage from tv3 to al jazeera, the opposition hit a home run this time. great publicity , and hopefully more angered voters and fence sitters voting for them.

yea yea , i hear u ..of 60 plus non govt org only “insignificant” 5 opposition political parties, or in percentage terms, 7% of bersih is opposition parties.

ok so tell me , so tell me why is it that 5 out of 7 delegation that went to to hand the memorandum to the King were leaders of opposition political parties?

sorry to break yr bubble, im a rakyat. u did nothing for me except made a 1/2 hr journey turn into a 3 hr journey thanks to traffic and roadblocks. enough of your ‘we did it for malaysia’ and yr ‘daulat tuanku’..you guys didnt gv an ass abt the tuanku when they were beaten to the ground by DrM. and u didnt do it for malaysia, you did it for the 5 ppl out of 7 that went to see the king… who was in trengganu horse riding.

I am compiling a list of detail commentaries so that people who are searching for them can easily find them. I hope you don’t mind if I use a couple of quotes from your blog for this list.
The compilation of the BERSIH blogs can be found here: http://mfabm.blogspot.com

Cool :) - fred

@melvin: I was a little blur that night, what with all the walking (I’m not exactly built for walking…) and the rush for my bus back to JB. I wish I stayed longer (or booked a hotel). In any case, now that I’ve had some time to think about it, and after reading Galadriel’s post on the matter, I’m also wondering if there should be another rally.

What would be the purpose? I guess the point would be to keep the momentum going, but I’m wondering at what cost - BERSIH was a non-partisan initiative. DSAI’s suggestion may start people actually believing that it isn’t.

@josh: I guess those of us not at Masjid Jamek were lucky… next time could be our turn, though.

“I didn’t want the fears of an earlier generation, nor the apathy of the current one, to affect my decision. ” - this is exactly what will set us all apart!

We met each other at Bangsar the other day with Rocky and Haris. Sorry, but we didn’t have much time talking to each other. But I didn’t know that you’re one of those post writers that got picked up by Bolehland.

Should have talked the other day…sheesh.

But I have a bit of reservation of Anwar doing another round of rally. The concern is that the police may figure the next time of how they got hoodwinked by people.

Good to have met you. You do know that Haris’s Bangsa Malaysia thingy will be in your vicinity soon.

The Fuzz (haven’t heard this in ages, man) did not faze us.

Gee, I hope the next ‘walk’ is a little drier. It rained at the Penguin, 10-Eleven was no diff.

Cheers.