Posted on July 10, 2011, Sunday
KUALA LUMPUR: The illegal street demonstration planned in the city yesterday by outlawed group ‘Bersih 2.0’ led by Datuk S Ambiga failed to garner support from the people as only some 10,000 people turned up for it instead of the 100,000 people the group had targetted.
According to political analyst Dr Sivamurugan Pandian, the lack of support could have been due to the people realising that the group was not sincere in its stated objective of calling for electoral reform but instead the illegal assembly was more politically motivated.
He said besides this, careful preparation by the police in facing the illegal assembly also prevented any untowards incidents from happening.
“If it was really the case (Bersih 2.0 championing electoral reform), more people would have backed the group. However, it was the opposite. This was markedly different from the ‘reformasi’ illegal street demonstrations of 1998 and the Hindraf and Bersih rallies in 2007 which received widespread support,” he said when contacted by Bernama.
The Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) political science lecturer from Penang, who has been in the federal capital since Wednesday to follow developments and see for himself how the rally would turn out, said the failure of the illegal assembly was also very much due to the police’s strategic actions to “check the group”.
He also said the strategy adopted by Bersih 2.0 to move in small groups from several locations in the city to their targeted venue (the Merdeka Stadium), was aimed at making their numbers look bigger than they actually were.
“I have to admit the strategy was very effective. The truth is, I hardly saw any Chinese among the demonstrators, most seemed to be PAS members,” he said, adding that Bersih 2.0 also failed create the “yellow wave” it had aimed to achieve as the police succeeded in confiscating yellow T-shirts with the word ‘Bersih’ on them, which were banned by the authorities, ahead of and during the illegal assembly yesterday.
Bersih 2.0 also admitted that it failed to meet its objective of handing over a memorandum to call for electoral reform to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong yesterday.
Its steering committee posted on its website www.bersih.org :”We will make appropriate arrangements to deliver the memorandum when the police have calmed down”.
“Yesterday’s gathering is not the end, it is but one more step in the long walk for clean and fair elections in Malaysia. The campaign continues, to work for electoral reform, the release of all detainees and an end to harassment by the authorities,” it said. — Bernama
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