To all my friends who are supporters of Barisan Nasional: I support you.
I fully support your right to choose a BN representative to represent you and your fellow constituents. I fully support your right to vote for this person, to make speeches for him or her, to work in his or her campaign, to gain similar support from your friends or family and even to donate your time or effort to his or her political cause and career.
I whole-heartedly, 100%, completely agree you have every right to do all this.
And in the same way, every single eligible Malaysian has a right to make a similar choice. Whether for BN or not is irrelevant. The right to vote for and support a politician of your choice is enshrined in our constitution.
In the same way I respect and support your rights, I expect you to offer me the same respect and support. Whom I wish to represent me and my family is not important at all and doesn’t figure in this statement nor in my philosophy in general.
Now, if you have read thus far and think ‘OK I can give John my respect, no matter his choice’ then do read on.
If you’ve come this far and think ‘I know where John is headed and it’s not in BN’s direction and there’s no way I can accept that’ then you might just as well stop now for what I have to say is for right-thinking Malaysians who are rational and mature.
OK, ready to read on?
Firstly, let me say I still support the Bersih movement, now in version 3.0 as it were. I still support the 8 original demands from Bersih 2.0 and am in agreement with the 3 additional demands in Bersih 3.0. Here’s the thing - you don’t have to agree with my choice here. Not at all. If you do, then you’re my friend for more reasons than maybe even I initially thought.
If you don’t, then let’s talk a bit more…
To carry on, I would like you to divorce Bersih from our political leanings for a while - the two are, after all, actually independent of each other. Let’s also just take BN or PR or whatever out of our minds for just a few moments and talk about our rights in general, for that is where I started this conversation. After all, we’ve already agreed you and I both have a right to vote for whomever we please, right? So whomever we choose at this point is not relevant.
What is relevant is that we both have a right to choose. And by extension of this right, our choice of candidates have their rights too.
What rights might this be, you ask?
Well, firstly, they have a right to be chosen by Malaysians who are truly, unambiguously, incorruptibly, undeniably, irrefutably and honestly allowed to by law. That means simply that they live or maintain a home in the area where they vote. It also means they must not be barred by law and uhm… alive. But of course… They also must not be bribed or coerced.
What happens if a person maintains a home in that constituency but cannot be present to vote? If he has the right to vote, then it follows that the system should present every opportunity for him to exercise that right, don’t you agree? Well, I guess then that that person should be given the right to vote by post. This would be wonderful for our armed forces helping to maintain peace all over the world (remember Somalia?) or aid workers in various disaster areas and so on. After all, our candidates, if they are to fairly fight for the right to represent a particular set of constituents, should be given every opportunity to be voted for or against by the constituents of the area they wish to represent.
Just ask yourself, if this were a BN politician you’re thinking of, would you be in agreement thus far? Yes? Good… on to the next point.
Would you like to ensure that an opposing candidate doesn’t have the same person vote for him twice? That just would not be fair, right? What could we do to prevent this? Well, there are expensive electronic systems we can put in place. And then there is the cheap and proven use of indelible ink. A voter gets his ballot papers, casts his vote then has his thumb or finger dipped in ink he can’t wash away until all the votes have been cast and counted. So, if there are 1000 people in your area, you would expect a total of no more than 1000 votes. I’m sure you agree it just wouldn’t be right if your candidate had 500 votes and the other guy had 501.
If, like me, you’ve travelled through much of Malaysia (well I must admit I haven’t seen much of Sabah and Sarawak but would love to) you’ll know there are still many beautiful and quite unspoilt areas around. I especially love parts of Endau Rompin National Park and even Tasik Bera. Some of these areas have no TV or phone reception and the internet is non-existent for people who live there. If they get newspapers it’s days late. But they do live in Malaysia and are represented in Parliament by elected representatives.
Shouldn’t these representatives have every right to access these voters too, and tell them about their plans and programmes and what they’re going to do for them? Well, if you were a candidate and had to travel to meet people from the towns and cities as well as these more remote people, wouldn’t you need more time to do so? I think it’s only right if you think your candidate needs a bit more time than say a week in order to campaign. In fact I completely agree all candidates need a bit more time than just a week or so. Maybe 3 weeks? In fact when we had our very first elections in 1955, we campaigned for 42 days! Agree? Good, now let’s move on.
We now get our news from a variety of sources and it’s only natural that some media owners would have their own preferences or biases. Don’t you think media owners have a responsibility above and beyond their biases though? By that I mean they should be fair in their reporting and should not spread false or uncorroborated stories. After all, what they say influences many and as Spiderman learnt, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. Media owners should thus be careful about what they say.
I think this works for your candidate, considering the rise of the alternative media. It would not be right for any media owner to publish untruths or rumours that would damage your candidate’s credibility. I completely agree with that. In fact I also think they should offer all candidates a chance to be heard. Why play favourites and report only the utterances of their preferred candidates? Yours should have a chance too.
Come to think of it, everyone in the elections should be restrained in their comments about others. Leave out things that are not relevant to the electoral or democratic process. Gutter journalism has no place in modern society for we now live in a world where the word has truly taken on a might to challenge the sword. But worse, it can incite some to raise the sword. With great power comes great responsibility…
Agreed? Good…
Let’s have a quick chat now about something really cool. Did you know it now takes less time to get a Malaysian passport renewed than a Singaporean one? I had mine done at Subang in 3 hours while my Singaporean friend had to wait days!Great, huh?
Well, if the Immigration Department can be efficient, don’t you think it would be good if other government agencies could be too? Take the Elections Commission for example. A friend of mine recently registered to vote and, like me and everyone else, it took 6 months for his name to appear on the roll. Imagine if many people were influenced by your choice but could not vote because they were not registered in time… Not good right?
What if they, like my friend, then found mistakes in their registration?
You see, my friend is a guy but he found that he was registered as a woman instead. If he had not found out and turned up to vote, his vote would not have been counted.
You wouldn’t want your fellow supporters to be disqualified because of mistakes like this would you?
You also would not want your or your fellow supporters’ votes to be jeopardised because of threats and so on, right? Imagine if you turned up to vote and were put off by opposition supporters behaving threateningly. That would not be right and you would expect the Police, among others, to protect your rights, correct? I agree with you - that’s what the Police are supposed to do and if you were in any way threatened while trying to exercise your democratic right I would be one of the first to stand up and shout ‘That must be stopped!’ So, fair reporting and better government agencies too - we seem to agree on a lot of things.
In fact, if you’ve read this far, I think we’re just about in total agreement - except maybe in our choice of candidates but we did say we would leave that out of this discussion.
So, what have we discussed really? And where do we stand now?
Well, we discussed - and agreed - on our rights and the rights of our candidates. No arguments there. I support your candidate’s every right as mentioned above.
And I say ‘Congratulations!’
‘For what?’ you ask?
‘For joining Bersih.’
Because every single one of the things we agreed on above is mentioned in the 8 demands of the Bersih movement. Every. Single. One. And not one more. Nor one less. So, when you nodded in agreement with what I said above, you also nodded in agreement with all those who have supported the Bersih movement.
So you see, when I loudly proclaimed last July that I was being non-partisan and that everything about Bersih is non-partisan, I wasn’t lying or exaggerating. It is the truth. And it is also true that it is in EVERYONE’s interest that the demands of Bersih 2.0 and 3.0 are met. Everyone. Every single Malaysian.
I really don’t give a hoot about who each of us supports politically. I do give a hoot and more about whether our support is expressed in a general elections that is clean and fair. That is all we want. And if you are as right-thinking and mature as I hope you are, then it is all you want too.
So, join me. And many others in our call for what is right. And for our rights.
