Anwar, Guan Eng join hands to rock Penang
This was one of the big ones.
It was one those evenings where you just had to be there to experience the growing sentiment among Penangites seeking change and reforms.
Some 10,000 converged at the indoor stadium of the private Han Chiang High School in Penang.
Imagine the traffic jams! Kalah Pesta!
Penangites are known to be a fickle sort, come election time. In 1969 they voted then-opposition party Gerakan into power. Gerakan joined BN in 1974 and has evolved into a party of apologists, almost on the same level as MCA and MIC (one notable difference is that they dared bring up the Bangsa Malaysia concept of multi-racialism last year). In 1990, the same year 21-year Chief Minister Lim Chong Eu passed the baton to Dr Koh Tsu Koon, Penangites again revolted; the DAP came within 3 seats of taking over the state. The following elections, DAP was left with a single seat.
This year, it is Dr Koh's turn to pass the baton, but few seem to agree on who the next best Chief Minister is. Will Penangites turn to the Opposition again? There are more issues at hand than just Dr Koh's departure of course. The man is a very likable person, with none of the arrogance or pretentiousness I've seen in UMNO leaders much lower on the rungs of the political ladder. However, he has been accused of being too nice and indecisive. I think the last straw for some people was when the PGCC project was announced, as part of a string of economic corridors Badawi wants to build across the country.
Anyone driving in Penang knows what a nightmare the traffic issue has become. PGCC is certain to exacerbate that. The main road in front of the Turf Club gets terribly congested at different times of the day, and this is without any form of construction whatsoever. What kind of hell will it turn to when contractors start to build 40 high-rise towers in that spot? Then there are the environmental concerns, the questions over Patrick Lim and whether he is a government crony, and the indignation that nobody bothered to ask Penangites what they wanted in the first place. Many, many jobs will be created, mainly for construction workers, and we all know Penangites are just lining out the door to fill these back-breaking positions - NOT.
There are many other on-going issues of course. Once the premier tourist destination in Malaysia, Penang beaches have degenerated into dirty sands with murky waters. Its reputation as an IT hub suffered a major embarrassment* with the still-unsolved theft of Intel chips worth RM50million from the Penang airport in November 2006 and supposedly led to the company cutting back its operations in the state. We can't escape the racial issues: the Malays, now a minority, feel sidelined by the Chinese majority. On a half-wall where a home used to stand along Jalan Tanjung Bunga, a tsunami victim scrawled, "Di mana hak orang Melayu?"
In this cosmopolitan state of 1.3 million where 80% are urban-dwellers, Penang's population is 47% Chinese, 43% Malay, and 11% Indian (year 2000 stats). Gerakan, MCA, UMNO, MIC, DAP, PKR and PAS all have state and/or parliamentary seats here. Penangites have the potential to be the first in Malaysia to practice the concept of Bangsa Malaysia. Now, if only Anwar can convince the Malays to support him again...
*Update March 2nd, 2:03am: Malaysiakini broke this story about a letter Dr Koh sent to Badawi on December 3, 2007, essentially warning Badawi that Motorola would pull the plug on its Penang operations, flushing 10,000 jobs down the drain, unless the federal government approved an RM1 billion deal for the company to upgrade the police force's radio network. Can't wait to see the fallout from this one!
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