The prime minister was left red-faced when hecklers interrupted his speech with chants of 'Bersih'.
PETALING
JAYA: Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s decision to hold a
meet-and-greet session with Malaysians in London just two weeks after
the Bersih 3.0 rally backfired when Bersih supporters shouted him down
during his opening speech.
Despite initially ignoring his hecklers, Najib was forced to abandon
his speech after 25 seconds to ask that they stop their chants of
“Bersih! Bersih!”
“Can you please stop it? Can you please stop it,” he said.
A member of the audience shouted back something inaudible, to which
Najib replied, “I know, I know but can you stop it? You can meet with me
later, ok. Please, can you stop it?”
As the chanting persisted, another participant shouted, “I want to vote…why you don’t allow me to vote?”
An unidentified individual had also taken the hecklers to task, asking them to “show some respect” for the prime minister.
The heckling finally ceased and Najib was able to continue with the rest of his speech.
The event, “An Evening With The Prime Minister”, was held at the
prestigious indigO2 Arena in the Dome Peninsula, a venue that would
feature as a key location for the Olympics in July.
Organised by the Malaysian High Commission in London, the free event offered food, drinks and cultural entertainment.
‘Free transport and provisions’
According to Sarawak Report, the high commission also arranged for
free transport and provisions to attract students from all over the UK
to the event.
The website obtained an insider email which revealed that the event
targeted 1,000 Malaysians and that travel by coach to London was
provided as well refreshments on board.
“Students from as far away as Edinburgh University up in Scotland
have been urged to attend in a highly organised effort by diplomats.”
“The roundup is presumably designed to avoid too many empty front row
seats that might otherwise be picked up by cameras beaming back
pictures to the censored media in Malaysia.”
On April 28, close to 1,000 Malaysians and supporters had gathered in
London for the Bersih 3.0 rally in support of clean and fair elections.
In Kuala Lumpur, on that same day, some 80,000 people took to the
streets for a peaceful protest which later took a violent twist when
police fired tear gas and water cannons.
The police and the government blamed the protesters for breaching the
barricades at Dataran Merdeka but Bersih, the opposition and civil
society groups accused the police of using unwarranted excessive force.
Scores, including policemen, were injured in the incident.
Bersih’s previous rally last July and the most recent one, had both tainted the image of Najib’s administration.
‘Najib acted like a statesman’
Meanwhile, Deputy Higher Education Minister Saifuddin Abdullah
commended Najib for displaying “real statesmanship” in handling the
situation.
He noted that Najib had realised the hecklers consisted of a mere few
and the bigger majority were civil and wanted to listen to his speech.
“So instead of being sidetracked by the few he focused on the majority,” he told FMT.
“But true to his statesmanship not only did he not scold the
hecklers, he in fact told them that he was willing to see them after the
programme,” he said.
Saifuddin added that he was currently awaiting further information regarding the incident and would wait to see what follows.
Commenting on the matter, Bersih 3.0 steering committee member Maria
Chin Abdullah said that overseas Malaysians were expressing their
frustration over the continued ambiguity of their eligibility to vote in
the upcoming general election.
“This is a question that neither Najib nor the Election Commission has answered yet,” she stated.
“Despite setting up a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on
electoral reforms to look into the issue of overseas voters, nothing has
really happened,” she added.
In February, the PSC said that the Election Commission was still
reflecting on the “sets of conditions” on allowing overseas Malaysians
to vote.
Overseas Malaysians were currently not included in the category of
postal voters unlike civil servants, full-time students and their
spouses living abroad.
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