I just came back from this ceramah. It could be considered a star-studded one, and also one that attracted even more audience than the first one. Cars were parked all the way to USJ13 and USJ11, and I would even think USJ4, but I'm not so sure. Flag bearers were showing the way to the field, and when we arrived at 9.20pm, Tony Pua was already speaking in his entertaining and no-nonsense approach.
I think he went on till 9.45, then a special arrival of Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of former DPM and de-facto keADILan leader Anwar Ibrahim. The audience gave a respectful standing welcome, and Tony stayed silent while welcoming her to the field. She spoke in immaculate English and addressed the crowd very professionally. I was very impressed with the way she held herself, and for a newcomer to the elections, I think she is doing very well. If the voters of Lembah Pantai are intelligent, they will vote her in over the useless incumbent Shahrizat.
Loh Gwo Burne spoke next, and this time he spoke marginally better than the previous time. Although he still has a lot to learn and improve on. Many people still do not believe he can make it in parliament against heavyweights. Each candidate must be well vetted and presented to the voting population so that we may make a better informed decision. I believe in giving keADILan the benefit of doubt, so he may have my vote but if he screws up, he will get the message!
Haris Ibrahim of the People's Parliament spoke next. It was my first time listening to him speak, and he strikes me as someone who can stand for the rights of the People. He has his principles and what he said made much sense. That we are the boss of the elected representatives. That we have the right to get to know the candidates for MP and ADUN. That we are responsible to reclaim the country's governance from corrupt and useless governments. That we have the duty to vote in a responsible government.
The next speaker was the veteran speaker, some Mr. Chua - I fail to catch the full name - who didn't offer anything new in terms of content. I thought he was very old-school in his approach.
Edward Ling spoke next, and as usual he explained the reason why he took 2 weeks of annual leave from his company to help run Hannah's campaign. Again he reiterated his admiration for the movie V for Vendetta, and quoted "The people should not be afraid of the government; the government should be afraid of the people!"
Finally it was Hannah Yeoh's turn to take to the stage. Again, she spoke amazingly well. Each sentence was punctuated with a calculated pause while waiting for the audience's applause to quiet down. Each point was made clear. Her speech was well structured, and she managed to connect with the audience with her humility and straightforwardness. Once again, I am inspired by her. I believe she has taken some pointers from her first ceramah, from feedback given to her during the walkabouts and via the blog comments, so her speech this time tackles some of those questions. The fact that 2 weeks of campaigning doesn't give her much time to talk about local issues one-by-one. The fact that she may be young and inexperienced but she is clean and not corrupt. The fact that she may be just married but apparently one great leader of the country was also recently just married! More interestingly, she presented some unscrupulous expenditure by MPSJ in the recent years. Squandering away some hundred eighty million of our taxpayer money to projects which have not seen any improvement in our quality of life. Hannah reiterated that should she be voted into the Selangor state assembly, she will expose all these problems and act as the watchdog for any lax expenditure, bad governance, misallocation of funds, to ensure that Subang Jaya people are properly represented and protected!
The evening continued with the speech by Teng Chang Kim, the existing Opposition leader in the Selangor state assembly. He spoke predominantly in Mandarin, and I suppose his speech managed to capture the hearts of the "aunty" demographics. Although I couldn't really understand many of the words and phrases used, I sort of caught the gist of his topic. Of all his expose's of the BN state assembly representatives. Of Muhamad Muhamad Taib's "I don't understand English" 2.4Mil cash smuggling, of suspect land alienation procedures at ridiculously low premiums, of other interesting problems in the state assembly.
Teresa Kok showed up to round off the night. She spoke in mix of Cantonese, Mandarin and English, and brought the latest news of the China Press evening edition. Apparently, our Pak Lah has setup a website that allows the electorate to contact him directly and write in Chinese! And he will also reply in Chinese! No comment here...
Anyway, all the invited speakers openly pledged support for Hannah and fully endorsed Hannah's candidacy. It is indeed heart warming and inspiring for so many party heavyweights to openly support a green candidate as new as Hannah. I'm sure Hannah is very inspired and touched by this, but I also hope that the voters of Subang Jaya constituency will give Hannah a boost and vote her in to the state assembly (hopefully making the MCA candidate lose deposit too!)
Perhaps my only complaint, and probably this was a mistake on DAP's part, was that there were still speakers talking about Chinese this, Indian that, Malay this... I thought that DAP was multiracial and non-communal. If so, please don't talk about "the Chinese rights, the Indian share of economy, the Malay problems..." and also, try to refrain from having a Chinese-only speech, as it will push away the non-Chinese-speaking audience (I saw an Indian family and several Malay families leaving as soon as Teng said he would be speaking in Mandarin).
Well, anyway, apparently according to this posting, Lim Kit Siang and Jeff Ooi will be supporting the following ceramah on Monday 3rd March in USJ12 (again). So I hope that I'll be able to catch the ceramah, as Monday's are also my RTM days.
Just Change It! Jom Ubah! Long live Barisan Rakyat!
