Buy- Elections

Its been a while since i last posted, lot of things have happened since then . The Tamil Tigers now have an air wing, and its scaring the daylights (or rather nightlights) out of Colombo and its sole international airport. Iraq continues to be a bloodbath , a South Korean madman decided to buy a couple of guns and murder 32 of his fellow students at Virginia Tech, Yeltsin is dead, Tony Blair is on the verge of buggering off, Saddam got hanged, Australia won yet another cricket world cup and closer to home there was a by-election and two buy-elections.

The by-election was in some constituentcy which i can't remember the name, anyhow the opposition decides to boycott and BN just marches back into town. Without opposition the process is pretty much straight forward, just show up on nomination day to register yourself. And since the only opposition is a 21 year old Chinese youth who ran as an independent, theres not much effort to put in. And hence BN won handsomely without much effort.

As for the buy-elections one was in Machap, Malacca and the other in Ijok, Selangor. Here the opposition contested too DAP and PKR respectively, and the BN election machinery comes to life in full swing. These places which many Malaysians never knew existed suddenly became the centre of media spotlight, suddenly the government starts upgrading roads, awarding long overdue land titles, clearing up drains and installing street lights , things they have neglected to do for so long. Millions of Ringgit worth of projects were poured overnight into the areas, it would not have happened in the absence of an election. In fact some Chinese Association in Machap took out an advert in a Chinese newspaper thanking the DAP for contesting the elections, if it was a "no-contest" they would not have gotten all these goodies from the government. The funny thing is that its known that BN has bottomless resources when it comes to funds and such to run campaigns, but they also have access to government funds which they can use to their advantage like pouring in projects into the contested area during campaign periods. People just fail to realize that their being bribed with their own money, which they have earlier payed as taxes.

If you are not happy with development and progress in your area, just hope your assemblyman or MP dies in office. There will be an election to choose his replacement, just hope for the opposition to contest it too. Lo and behold BN will march into town with upgraded roads, new street lights and millions of Ringgit worth of projects to upgrade the areas infrastructure and development.

A while back I finally registered to vote, its a very simple process.. just walk into your local post office and show your MyKad. The clerk will do it for you, no forms to fill up. In the end you get a pink slip that confirms your registration, this whole thing takes less than 5 minutes. So please go exercise your right and responsibility and register ASAP, as elections are in the near future and it takes 3 months for your name to be updated in the electoral roll. Theres no point just bitching about the government at the mamak shop with your mates, you want change you will have to vote for it. Thats the least anyone can do.