Last night was a frenzy. TV1 and TV3 results were slow. I relied heavily on blogger's info and malaysiakini website. Kit Siang's blog crashed even before i could enter. Lilian Chan's blog provided a link to a working malaysiakini which provided the latest updates but soon its server was facing difficulty accomodating the immense traffic even though it had provided 2 mirrors initially. Even Lilian's host Bryan had to remind guests not to refresh their pages too frequently as it would crash the server as well. By midnite, there were 3 mirrors provided by malaysiakini to accomodate the volume of traffic. As more people became aware of faster updates by malaysiakini, they expanded their accessibility to 6 mirrors by the time i checked it early this morning. Well done and thanks to Malaysiakini and Lilian for your excellent service.
The first seat won by DAP was Bandar Kuching. I couldn't believe it at first as Alan Sim was doing rather well. But the citizens have spoken so Chieng Jen returned with 11k majority. That piece of news definitely got the ball rolling last nite. News that DAP candidates were leading in all the seats in Penang did set fire. Would we be looking at the change that we had heard so much about? Then unconfirmed news (hearsay only) said 3 rockets were launched in Sarawak, ie Kuching, Stampin and Sarikei. Were there going to be winds of change in Sarawak as well, another tsunami after the 2006 state elections?
Then the bomb dropped... in Sibu, DAP sarawak chairman Wong Ho Leng lost to incumbent Robert Lau by 3k+ and its publicity chief David Wong also lost to incumbent Tiong Thai King in Lanang. Not long after that, news confirmed that the opposition only won 1 seat in Sarawak. Sarikei slipped out of DAP's hands after a recount. Wong Ho Leng attributed the loss to independent candidates. There is a certain truth in that the main independent candidate, who was an ex-DAP, pulled 500+ votes which if transferred to DAP's candidate, would have sealed the victory. On the other hand, there may be more to it than meets the eye. DAP will have some serious soul-searching to do in its post-mortem meeting.
The night of 8th March continued with DAP-PKR-PAS gaining 27 out of 40 state seats. Kelantan was retained by PAS but Terengganu was BN's to keep. Kedah was the next state to fall into opposition's hands. It was already midnite. My laptop was burning up from being on from morning. I was down with flu so I thought I'd call it a night. Then up I went to bed but the tv was too tempting to be left alone. So on came the tv and the results came trickling in. Opposition was winning more than double of what parliamentary seats they had in the previous general elections. They could be on the way to denying BN its 2/3 majority. OMG. Senior ministers eg. Koh Tsu Koon, Samy Vellu, Shahrizat, Zainuddin, Palanivel were voted out. Pity Tsu Koon.. yang dikejar tak dapat, yang dikendung berciciran. Pity Samy Vellu, this must be his worst birthday present ever. It was a neck to neck battle in Selangor and Perak. At 1.30 am, my head couldn't take it anymore.
This morning, as I read Malaysiakini, it was Pak Lah saying 'We've lost, we've lost'. The government has lost 5 states to the opposition and its 2/3 majority in the 12th national elections on 8th March, 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment