BOOKED

there is no better ways to see the stark difference in freedom of expression and objective reportings between a truly democratic country and a pseudodemocracy like malaysia then now. go read NYT or any american papers about presidential candidate race for example, and compare that to the fucked up NST, the star or even worse the malay papers Utusan and B harian. to put it simply our papers are nothing but BN propaganda tool and US papers are well, US papers.

i can not read the real feelings and pulse of the malaysians about the election from these malaysian papers. so i took matters into my own hand and did a little poll to see what my friends feel about it. what are their voting preference?. in short i sent sms to some of my friends & collegues asking " will you vote BN or BA? BA is of course barisan alternatif...any opposition parties

and this is of course not a scientific or statistically accurate poll as the sample is way too small, and like anyone else who your friends are depend on your milleu so to speak and this will skew things up. it's not a repsentative cross section of malaysian society thats for sure. but as i say, i sent sms to friends and colleagues. mostly professionals with tertiary education ranging from professors, head of departments and company professionals ,to a few businessmen and several blue collar workers (plumbers, clerks etc) and a token writer or two. Mostly malays, some chinese, a few indians.

and the first response came from my local plumber( malay).BN! this doesn't look good , i thought to myself. then came a slew of responses , mostly BA! but there are a few surprises! one dean of a local university sent the message ' i vote hussein obama'... i thought my question is simple enough: do you vote BN or BA but apparently people can find creative ways of answering it. quite a few sent poems and ditties by way of answers...i can't decide what to make of it. so in the end i decided to put these under 'undi rosak' or if i know the guy well and know their preference i'll slot them into BN or BA accordingly.

a couple of examples...

Tepuk amai2

Tepuk amai2

budak baru meniarap,

undi raamai2

tolak kerajaan korup,

tepuk amai amai'

ambil batang penyapu,

undi ramai2

tolak keraajaan penipu,

tepuk amai2,

makan gulai timun,

undi ramai ramai

tolak kerajaan penyamun,

tepuk amai2

belalang kupu kupu,

pakat ramai2

sokong tok guru,

tepuk amai amai,

katak bawah tempurung,

pakat ramai2

tolak keraajan pembohong

and here's another

niat mengundi: sahaja aku masuk BARISAN untuk pangkah BULAN demi KEADILAN

there were also responses that were obviously from fanatics. one not only say BA but added undi PAS sampai mati. and one or two called me asking what the hell is this? and many simply ignored and didn't answer. (not sporting la you!)

among the friends i sent the sms to there were a couple of millionaires but only one responded. a chinese businessman who has about six malay companies that he use to get government contracts. he called me and say of course i vote BN la! well, it figures. no surprise there.
one or two are cynics. one answered it depends who give me more.

what is interesting is all my chinese friends who responded voted BA except that chinese millionare. and majority of malays too. 2 of the bn supporters are govt officials, another is a plumber...so go figure.

and finally here's the summary of the results.

Total respondents: 38

Malays 29 – 21 BA, 4 BN, 4 undi rosak

Chinese 9 – 7 BA, 1 BN, 1 undi rosak

if each of you guys can do the same and we pool up our votes than perhaps we'll have a good sampling of what malaysians real pulse are.

ps

poll in malaysia today

OPPOSITION

33341 86.6%

BARISAN NASIONAL

5142 13.4%