Posted on July 10, 2011, Sunday
KUCHING: The Sarawak DAP’s breakfast session here in connection with the Bersih 2.0 rally yesterday turned out to be a calm one.
The hour-long gathering saw the party release a 3-page declaration for clean, free and fair elections for Bersih 2.0, which the federal government had pronounced unlawful.
All its 12 elected representatives donned yellow shirts but not with the ‘Bersih 2.0’ words. Imprinted was the party’s famous mascot ‘Ubah’.
All in all only about 30 persons wore yellow shirts during the session in a coffee shop at Stutong Commercial Centre here.
Before 8.30am, some members of the public wearing yellow-coloured shirts filled part of the outlet while police in plainclothes were said to be among the so-called breakfast goers.
Members of the Special Branch were also dispatched to observe the gathering while a chopper rotated a few times before 10.30am.
A middle-aged man, who refused to be identified, claimed that it was the first time he witnessed such a gathering, which called for free and fair elections.
He felt it was imperative for some quarters to initiate efforts to “clean up the current election system.”
“It has been so many years that we endured the system. All we want is electoral reforms and, in fact, the Barisan Nasional can do it but are they doing anything about it?” quipped the man.
A couple of officers in plainclothes told the press that anyone caught wearing yellow shirt with ‘Bersih 2.0’ would be nabbed right away.
Among the declaration points, said state DAP chairman Wong Ho Leng, was to call on the Election Commission to address unfair constituency delineation.
“Some state constituencies are four to five times bigger than others, and some parliamentary seats are more than 10 times bigger than others,” pointed out the Sibu MP and Bukit Assek assemblyman.
In Sarawak, Wong said Ba’Kelalan recorded 6,958 voters while Pending had 29,488.
“The BN won 25 constituencies with less than 10,000 voters in each of them, and 10 seats won by the DAP came with voters exceeding 20,000.”
He stressed that a distorted and unbalanced weightage meant unfair representation.
A check with the April 16 election results confirmed the disparity. Kuching, Pending, Batu Lintang, Kota Sentosa, Padungan, Batu Kawah registered over 20,000 voters each while Satok and Demak Laut had 10,431 and 10,437 voters respectively.
For the central region, Bawang Assan had 16,743 voters while Bukit Assek, Dudong and Pelawan registered over 26,000 voters.
In Miri, whilst both Pujut and Senadin recorded more than 22,000 voters, Bekenu and Piasau had only 10,672 and 16,600 respectively.
Wong asserted that the media must remain neutral and be a bastion in upholding democracy.
“But the repressive requirement to renew publication licences annually and BN control means the media had little choice but to resort to unbalanced reporting against the opposition during election time.
“In some newspapers, there had even been a total blackout of news on Pakatan Rakyat during elections.”
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