19 Jan 2009 One more lesson for UMNO and BN____________________________________________The victory by the opposition in the recent KT by-election on the17th January is yet another blow to the UMNO-led BN ruling classin Malaysia.The voters gave the PAS candidate a very assuring majority of over2600 votes and the message to UMNO and the BN is very clear:The voters are of the opinion that both have learned absolutelynothing from their past defeats.In the KT by-election, UMNO had again resorted to the old ways ofcampaigning. The UMNO goons tried to provoke the opposition byusing a number of hogwash tactics.The police was used to effectively limit the number of permits thatPAS wanted, thus giving UMNO the chance to connect them with theword "illegal gatherings".UMNO bigshots constantly derided the PK opposition, unaware that thepublic was fed up with such negative approaches being used. The votersknew that the PAS candidate would not be able to use similar tacticsas the media was tightly controlled by the BN government.UMNO also used the tried and proven methods to gain extra votes bybusing in outside supporters and using postal votes. Such effortsrequired government funds and facilities but such tactics might havenot gone down well with the voting public.The voters wanted to know what the BN, especially UMNO, could offer,and what they could do, to deal with the problems confronting thecountry right now.The voters wanted to know UMNO's answers to the rising crime rate, therising incidence of corruption, the ceaseless influx of aliens, thedark economic clouds now hovering almost overhead and the impendingmass closures of factories and businesses as a result of high operatingcosts and low demand for their products and services. Many small-timecontractors, whose haphazard existence was the deliberate product of thecountry's myopic racial policies, might soon go bust en masse, thus, manyinnocent citizens would be able to helplesssly watch as their life savingsevaporate before their very eyes. The country has witnessed a significantrise in syndicates making or selling narcotic and illicit synthetic drugs.Instead of showing what the BN government could do, the BN and UMNOmerely resorted to constantly badmouthing the opposition, and thisclearly disappointed the people of Kuala Terengganu.On top of that, UMNO never parted with all the bad old ways of the past:Pouring lorryloads of instant cash into the constituency and the constantevil propaganda in the media, notably on national TV, with shady characterslike Ezzam pushing the UMNO-BN cart, the huge disgust within the voters waseventually translated into a comfortable victory for the PAS candidate.An election is not a contest to see how good you can run down the opponent,rather, it is more of how good you can meet the hopes of the people.
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