Monday, November 5, 2007

THE PHANTOM USURPED.

When I was a kid, my hero was Phantom, a comic-book hero.In fact he was everybody's hero.

Before Batman, before The Shadow, before The Green Hornet, before The Lone Ranger, even before Captain Marvel and Superman the comics' first masked mystery-man hero had long since been striking fear into the dark hearts of the wicked.

Indeed, by the time the world-famous adventures of The Phantom were first recorded in print more than six decades ago, the grim champion of justice had already been around for nearly 400 years.

Such is the riveting, myth-freighted legend of The Phantom -- "The Ghost Who Walks," "The Man Who Cannot Die," "The Guardian of the Eastern Dark." In the beginning he had been a half-drowned sailor, flung ashore on the terrible, blood-drenched Bengalla coast after pirates burned his ship and slaughtered his mates. The gentle Bandar pygmies, taking him to be a sea god of ancient prophecy, nursed him back to fitness and became his everlasting friends -- as the castaway faced his destiny, donned costume and mask and was reborn as the first of the Phantoms, scourge of predators everywhere.

"I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice!" he cried as he formally took "The Oath of the Skull" by firelight. "And my sons and their sons shall follow me!"

The modern Phantom is the 21st of the line. Since Feb. 17, 1936, he has been the law in his dangerous part of the world, a one-man police force, a silent avenger who appears and vanishes like lightning. His home is the fearsome "Skull Cave," deep in the heart of his jungle. His only intimates have been the faithful Bandar, his great white horse Hero, his savage gray wolf Devil, and his lovely American sweetheart Diana Palmer.

HOWEVER, TODAY AND ONLY IN MALAYSIA THE WORD PHANTOM HAS A MOST DEROGATORY ASSOCIATION. THE PHANTOM'S OATH " to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice" HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY THE BARISAN NASIONAL PARTY AND DEFILED. TODAY THE EXPRESSION "PHANTOM VOTERS" HAS BEEN EXPERTLY CRAFTED INTO AN ARTFORM OF CHICANERY AND DEVIOUS MACHINATIONS TO WREST CONTROL OF CERTAIN CONSTITUENCIES. SOMEBODY COMPARED THIS ODIOUS ACT AS EQUIVALENT TO ONE SELLING ONE'S MOTHER, DAUGHTERS, FEMALE RELATIVES INTO PROSTITUTION TO BEAT THE COMPETITION! IS THIS MALAYSIA? TRULY ASIA?


On Friday 2Nov, Haris Ibrahim of People's Parliament, Ahirudin Atan of Rocky's Bru, Tony Yew of Can You See It, and I met some twenty Ipoh Timur constituents who wanted to know about the mysterious increase in the number of new voters injected into their constituency. An increase of some 8000 voters, 3000 of which will be postal votes surely triggered off the alarm bells.

We arrived just before 3pm at the Perak Election Commission office and met two groups of people. We told one group that they could not be included in the dailogue because they belong to the Gopeng constituency. The meeting took place at the Meeting Room and it was chaired by an En. Othman who sat in for the Pengarah who was urgently called to PutraJaya! He started the meeting by declaring that he was in no position to make any statements when he realized that the Press was present. Body language changed when we informed him and his two lady officers that four of us were bloggers but had come from KL to assist the Ipoh Timur group. With this assurance the officer acted congenially and even asked that a notebook be hooked up in the room for the group to check on their registration. Let me put on record that En Othman and his assistants acted professionally and friendly.We presented to the officers three cases for their attention:

Case1: Mr. N H Wong asked why he was transfered to vote in another constituency when he voted in Ipoh Timur in 2004. He still resides in the constituency.



Case 2: Mdm Wong Lee Li had never voted before. When urged by friends she registered but found out that she was registered to vote in Kebun Teh in Johore Bahru and her registered address in JB was 37 Jln Nibung, Taman Kebun Teh. Mdm Wong said that she was born in Ipoh, worked and lived in Ipoh and has never lived and worked in Johore Bahru.


Case 3. Rocky too had never voted before. Upon registration in KL in September 2007, he was told that he was a registered voter in 1999 in the Gopeng constituency! His residence address was 59 Jln Raja Mewa Mahidi, Rapat Setia. Rocky produced a police report to protect himself and to lodge a protest that someone falsified information to SPR and voted in his name. Rocky can't remember working and living in Perak.

So where does Phantom Votes come in? In the span of 4 years it is not possible that the people of Ipoh Timur went on a frenzied breeding spree!!! to up their voter eligibilty by some 5000. No new army camp was mobilised and definitely hundreds of police balai did not sprout profusely in Ipoh Timur. Your guess is as good as mine how useful the role these 8000 odd new voters would be. This figure is suffiient to show Uncle Kit his exit from Ipoh Timur.






AND THESE ARE MERELY THREE CASES. AND THERE ARE A FEW MILLION ELIGIBLE VOTERS OUT THERE STILL SITTING ON THE FENCE. GO REGISTER TO VOTE UNLESS YOU WANT TO PROSTITUTE YOUR SACRED VOTE. STOP WHINING AND SAYING THAT THE GOVERNMENT IS BAD. YOUR INDIFFRENCE IS THE MAIN CAUSE. YOU ENCOURAGED THE GOVERNMENT TO CHEAT. YOU DESERVE THE GOVERNMENT YOU HAVE


REMEMBER 10 NOVEMBER, 3.00PM DATARAN MERDEKA.
BE PART OF THE YELLOW WAVE.

17 comments:

Pak Zawi said...

SPR, what more proof do you need? Your agency reputation has been at stake and nothing was done to change it. Do you expect us to still believe in you?

Anonymous said...

Zorro, I live in overseas and never voted before. Last month, my mom and brother told me to go to the Malaysian Embassy to register because "the election is coming.." they say.

I called the embassy last week and was repeatly told not to waste a trip to the embassy and that there's no point voting in overseas. My curiousity made me investigate further and found that the ballots were still in the embassy when the results were out for the past elections! WTF.

Kerp (Ph.D) said...

I dread thinking if i myself have been registered to vote somewhere say in, kepala batas when infact i prefer to stay unregistered!

zewt said...

they said they gonna go on 'arrest-on-sight' mode ler... :(

zorro said...

Anon....boxes still there may not mean that votes have not been tabulated. Those could be old boxes, like the hundreds we saw in the Ipoh Election Commission office on Friday. En Othman said they were boxes used in 2004, when I asked him. However, I can empathise with you when they told you not to waste time. I have emailed a couple of our embassies and they never seem to reply. Our people over there are on extended vacation. There should be some demonstration to wake them up. I strongly suggest that you make a personal visit and seek out the ambassador and relate to him what you were told by one of his staff. Yours if you vote overseas will be a postal vote. To them it is insignificant, unless they plan postal votes like in Ipoh Timur and other places in the country.

Danny, it is a SACRED DUTY to vote and youcannot abdicate this responsibility. Let me take you to register. Say when? The EC has a way to use unregistered voters as phantom votes. Will you allow that?
If Rocky was not incensed you think he would drive up to Ipoh last Friday to find out? Rocky and us found out his residence address. It was a shoplot used as a cooperative. Can you now figure out the possibilities?

Anonymous said...

Zorro, it's brave of you to undertake this cause. be that as it may, the struggle against Umno stupidity, idiocy, hypocrisy is a long one. Keep on fighting, brudder. Ir'S a long and winding road but in the end justice will prevail. Umno will get its come-uppance one day.

Kerp (Ph.D) said...

yes, once the parliament is dissolved, perhaps i will.

shar101 said...

Zorro,

A couple of weeks ago, the EC secretary made a press statement in the Star saying that there were EC officers who abused their position in forging voters' signatures in cases of address transfers i.e. the voters themselves were not aware.

Apparently, the EC was duped into believing these requests were genuine.

The EC secretary also mentioned that 'no action was taken against these officers'.

Therefore, it means these officers may continue to find other ways of 'padding up' the electoral role, the reason for doing so, is up to anybody's imagination and I won't discount the fact that they will get paid for it.

If there is a prima facie case of fraud in Ipoh Timur, will it disrupt proceedings for the next GE when probable cause is established to doubt the authenticity of the gazetted electoral rolls?

Something to ponder on, eh bro.

P.S. Frenzied breeding spree? Wow!

Anonymous said...

With this posting, i am even prouder of you, Cik Gu! Thumbs up, Cik Gu from Tepen (Taiping)!

zorro said...

Danny, when Parliament is dissolved may be too late to register. There is a cut-off point anytime now.

zorro said...

Taiping Becaman, terima kasih.

Shah101....yes frenzied breeding spree as opposed to orgasmic outburst.

the witch's broo said...

zorro,

and there will continue to be phantoms in malaysia.....

cheers

backStreetGluttons said...

sorry bruder , times have indeed changed , its zorro's turn long lived the phantoms.

We humbly await your nex raid. afterall we are dealing with intellectually and bravery severely handicapped peo-ple so different approaches needed as you are well too aware !

Our beloved country is run by psychopaths and maniacs which Phantom will be lost for he is more used to crush more intelligent people

Anonymous said...

Pls allow me to share my experience. I'm a retired teacher serving in the last 3 elections while still in service. I was unhappy becauce I couldn't vote though we were promised postal votes.I hope my name is still in the right place! Fact is, we know the happenings but we were 'volunteered' as officers by God knows who and we can't declined.On election day, I was verbally abused and physically threaterned by the opposition over the electorate list .I understand, empathies and know their situation but could I appeal to them to remember that the officers there are not your enemies. We were there not by our choice. I was actually so pissed off that I swear I would not have anything to do with them. I have since cooled down but what if those abused did not?

Anonymous said...

speak up or forever hold your silence...

comes what may, be there on 10th November 2007

Hanafi Mohd Noor said...

We want it clean....
hanafionline.com

Anonymous said...

Zorro

Unfortunately, I cannot reveal the staff's name because I learned that employees at this particular embassy are very afraid of loosing their job while they have their families depend on them to put food on the table. How sad!

I also heard how one of them got demoted after 20 years of service simply because his cell phone had bad signal and couldn't get the message to go pick up the ambassador's family.....

It is not all fancy and glamorous working for the Malaysian Embassies especailly when you get some moron ambassadors!

Anon overseas.