My Election Journey - Part 2

After finished voting, we stopped by to chat on how the GE will turn out this time round. I must admit that I was a tad sceptical about the coalition chances especially receiving unconfirmed sms'es on the emergence of phantom voters in several hot constituencies.

Anyway I went back to a short nap, woke up at about 6pm and tune the TV to see if any results will be streaming in soon. Then my neighbout relayed the 1st good news. Zulkifli Nordin, candidate for Kulim Bandar Baharu, won in Saluran 1 (Stream 1). This sounded so surreal. He already bagged Saluran 1 on a BN stronghold.3 more Saluran to go. Previous candidates never even bothered to visit us showing how arrogant this chaps were and how confident they can win.

I decided I should be checking MalaysiaKini for more updates. Indeed MalaysiaKini got wide live coverage on many of the hotly contested seats. It was indeed very suprising that almost all the opposition candidates if not all were leading in their respective seats. I expected a nail bitting finish. A photo finish. But what turned out to be an evenly contested slugfest now turns out to be a one sided affair in favour of the Oppostion camp.

My phone rang non stop, my handphone rang and sms'es streaming in with news that Opposition was gaining ground as every minutes go by. Gerakan has fallen, totally wiped out. I told myself this couldnt be true. But when news was out that Dr Koh was beaten by Prof Ramasamy in Batu Kawan, I know that Gerakan's fate had been re written by the rakyat.By 8pm plus, Penang has fallen to the coalition alliance. Followed by Kelantan. Then Selangor and finally at 4am plus, confirmed news was that Perak received a similar fate too.

I slept at about 3am plus, so the news of Perak state fallen into the hands of the Opposition was still impending. Before that we all celebrated. I lost my voice. Congratulations messages and calls start to came in. Felt like a winning candidate although I am not. Everyone was happy.

Kit Siang called it a political tsunami in his blog that night. The Star picked up that term in the following day morning edition. Anwar Ibrahim was very confident of denying BN a 2/3 majority and he echoed it again in Spore when he was here. He was spot on.

Anwar factor, Pak Lah inability to lead, Khairy's arrogance, Umno's racist policies, HINDRAF rally,corruption, gross abuse of power, the power of internet and last but not least YouTube. All these ingredients were the perfect concoction for a disaster.

Ceramah now can be enjoyed at the comfort of one's home. Its easier for anyone to reach the masses. Indeed time has changed. In the last election, TV was my only guide. This time, Internet was my faithful guide.As I made my way to airport on Sunday, there were many passengers, just like me who came back to vote. Many were glad but still stunned by the results.

I was at Spore customs checkpoint about 3.30pm. The crowd was larger than usual. So I chatted with the custom officer. On a normal day, there would only be 50k PRs crossing over into Spore. Today as of 3.30pm, there was already 150k ppl that crossed over. Mostly with the intention to vote. The People's Power knows no boundaries. And on 08-Mar-08, the people has proven their point.