Anna Chin invited me to the Phoenix Toastmasters meeting today where I was the General Evaluator. It was a special meeting because they decided to have a marathon speech session – featuring seven ‘young’ speakers. I was indeed pleasantly surprised to find the quality of tonight's speeches to be rather good, and this reflects well on the club. I was particularly impressed with Wong Shi Wen and Kevan Tan. It is not often that I attended club meetings where I enjoyed the speeches wholeheartedly – but today is one of those days!
Perkasa’s Ibrahim Ali raised his discordant voice again when he warned Christians of testing Malays’ patience. “How many Malays are Christian(s)? Why do you have to have bibles in Bahasa? Why not use bahasa Iban, or Kadazan?” Ibrahim had asked.
This is a problem of national security ... we (Malays) have been far too giving, I want to remind them to not be excessive in their demands,” he said and then stressed that “They are not the majority of the country” (The Malaysian Insider, April 10, 2011).
Christians, please sedar diri!
On Sunday, clearly sensing the people’s growing disenchantment with Chief Minister Taib Mahmud, Najib Razak’s first message in his week-long campaign to skeptical Sarawak constituents was to reassure the local populace that a change in the state’s leadership was imminent. “Believe me, believe in me, when the time is right, we carry this out,” Najib pleaded in his speech (Webpage http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/print/malaysia/najib-moves-to-quell-anti-taib-sentiment-in-sarawak/, posted April 10, 2011). Tell me, isn’t that reinforcing PR’s clarion call to Sarawakians? To ubah? To change?
Anyway, I am not interested in his inconsequential message – Najib can say what he likes and it doesn’t matter to me if Taib is furious with Najib – but I was examining photos of the two rallies held in Kuching on Sunday. One was Najib’s 1Malaysia assembly – see photos 1-3 above – and the other was an opposition event featuring Anwar Ibrahim, Lim Guan Eng and Nik Aziz Nik Mat. Also take note that at Najib’s function, attendees got a 1Malaysia t-shirt, flags, hamburgers and mineral water (The Malaysian Insider, April 11, 2011). Very revealing are they not? Notice the empty seats at Najib's 'big' function and also notice the standing-room crowd (see the fourth and fifth photos) at the 'bigger' oppostion rally!
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