35,000 crowd at DAP’s final rally BUT Police attempted to stop, unable to do issue summons to parked cars

35,000 crowd at DAP’s final rally

Joseph Tawie | April 16, 2011

An angry crowd booed and jeered at Kuching police chief Mun Kok Keong for attempting to stop a permitted DAP rally.

KUCHING: A mammoth crowd at the Stutong Market, near here, watched in shocked disbelief as police attempted to muzzle Sarawak DAP founder Chong Siew Siang who was speaking on stage at the party’s last ceramah.

Kuching district police chief Mun Kok Keong rushed to the stage and seized the microphone from Chong and demanded that DAP stop the rally.

Chong was in the midst of addressing the 35,000-strong crowd who had gathered there.

The ensuing scuffle just below the stage, which was relayed on two big screens, surprised the crowd who started shouting ‘Ubah, Ubah!’ and booing the police.

The angry crowd surged towards the stage to protect the speakers but were urged to fall back and stay calm by DAP secretary Chong Chieng Jen (main picture).

Chong told the crowd that DAP had a permit to hold the rally and urged the crowd to be orderly.

The crowd shouted and booed the police.

Sensing the ‘danger’, the riot police left the scene, but ‘punished’ car owners who parked their cars along the roads to the market.

Several hundreds of cars were issued with summons for illegal parking or for traffic obstruction.

Earlier in the afternoon, officials from the Kuching City South Council and the police were about to dismantle the stage when photographers and pressmen arrived to take photographs.

DAP leaders and supporters also arrived in time to ‘save’ the stage and negotiated with the officials.

The DAP was compounded RM200 under the local authority (cleanliness by-law) 1996 for constructing the stage without the council’s permission.

However, whether the council has the right to compound the DAP was uncertain as the whole area has not been gazetted and had not officially handed over to the council.

Police slammed

A member of the council raiding party informed FMT that they received instruction allegedly from Alfred Yap, the BN-SUPP candidate for Kota Sentosa to demolish the stage as he was scared that thousands of people would attend the final rally of the opposition.

Efforts to contact Yap to confirm the story ended in futile.

Meanwhile, DAP national chairman Karpal Singh condemned the police for their action in trying to disrupt the legally organised DAP rally at the Stutong Market.

“I want the Inspector General of Police and the Sarawak police chief to answer for this disruption.

“Don’t break the law and don’t play with DAP,” he said to the cheering crowd.

“We are not afraid of the police because we are fighting for the rights of the people. We are fighting for justice and fairness,” he said.

“They can send us to Kamunting camp under ISA and we are not afraid, because the people are supporting us.

“After all many of us have ‘graduated’ from this camp during the ‘operation lalang’,” he said.

He told the crowd that if they were angry with the police action they should vote for the DAP candidates.

He hoped that all the 15 DAP candidates will be returned.

Nurul Izzah Anwar, PKR vice-president, who spoke at the rally also condemned the police action.

She also slammed the police for issuing summons against cars which were parked along the roads.

“This is election time, they should be more lenient with the people,” she said.