Spouse and Vote - the consequences

At certain time of our lives, we are bound to ponder upon the more important matters in life. Naturally, there are many important persons and things in life. There are parents, siblings, friends, education, career, spouse, children, etc. Many important things in life are given and not chosen. There is no choice. For example, parents, siblings and children. They are all god given. Education and career are chosen to a certain extent but not entirely due to limitation of financial ability, etc. We choose friends, in a way, as much as they choose us. Friends can come and go over time as a matter of choice.

Choosing a spouse is a very key decision in a lifetime. It is in itself a very major decision to make whether to have a spouse or not. A choice of who is the spouse is part of that very major decision that one has to go through in most adult lives. Why is a decision on spouse so critical? This decision affects many persons and events surrounding our lives. I shall attempt to state a list of persons that may be affected by this decision:

1. Parents
2. Children, if any
3. Siblings


I believe these 3 categories of people are in themselves important people that may also influence our decision in deciding on a spouse. One usually cares strongly for these people and want the choice of a  spouse to have a positive impact on them as opposed to a negative one.

It has come to my mind recently that there is another decision that affects even more  people around us. This thing is called 'Vote'. Voting by the people is used in a democratic country to choose a government. It is then a government by the people, of the people and for the people. This is the beauty of democracy. Ordinary people like you and me have a say in the rules and environment that they live in. Democracy allows people to participate equally—either directly or through elected representatives—in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.

Each individual's vote is very important in deciding a government that manage our lives and affairs. A choice of government may even be more critical than a choice of spouse. I shall do another attempt to state a comprehensive list of persons that may be affected by voting or choice of government:


1. Parents
2. Spouse
3. Children, if any
4. Siblings
5. Niece, nephews and relatives, etc
6. Neighbours, children of  neighbours
7. Friends
8. Future generations
9. Goodwill of current generations


You can see that on top of parents, siblings and children, there are many more people that are affected by our decision on a vote. It affects people whom we normally do not care about as much as our own family members. Remember that cute little daughter of your neighbour? Yes, your decision on who to vote for affects her too. The impact can be long lasting well beyond our lifetime.

I highlight goodwill of current generations in point 9. I believe it is something that we think less about.  We must remember that our future generations have to live with our decisions of yesterday and today. They will blame us for not voting wisely and choosing a good government. Only a good government can ensure good prospects for future generations.

Many parents wish to leave something behind for their children. They hope their children will have better or easier life than them. They usually leave wealth as inheritance. What I believe is that parents can do more than that. Parents can still pass on inheritance to their children. They should also leave a legacy that is more than just wealth. They should wherever possible leave a legacy of good government, laws and living environments to their children. They should stand up to what is believed to be wrong and put in efforts to correct a wrong. Go for short term pain but long term gain. There is no guarantee that long term gain will come but we must at least put our community in the right path. We are not here to pass our burden to our children and any future generations.

Whether it is a question on choice of a spouse or a vote, we must act with our long term interest in mind and more so the interest of our future generations at heart. Give a thought to those people that may be affected by our decision.

SIZE MATTERS NOW

I have met up with a few friends over the past several months. I was surprised by their apathy over their basic democratic rights to choose their government of choice. They were disinterested in exercising their voting rights even though most of them are in fact registered voters. I was very concerned. Voting right is our birth right in a democratic country. There are many things that we cannot choose in our life but certainly we can choose our government.


I inquired further and found out that they cared a lot about their country and its well being. They wanted to choose a good government to make their country great. However, they were in dissolution over the electoral rolls or the authenticity of voters in the registered list. They felt that their votes have become useless due to the numerous alleged manipulation of voters' list.


"I vote but so what? Can my vote do anything?" is the gist of the feeling among my friends.While i gave them the benefit of doubts on what they claimed, I was determined to search for more information on alleged manipulation of voters' list.


It did not take me a long time to dig out some  information this. Mr Google pretty much did all the work for me. When i read through some published articles. 'Surprised' i was with the claims of my friends, but 'astonished' i am now with the problems and potential manipulations of our voters' list. We are no Myanmar. We are not a young democratic country. Our elections have been going around for more than 50 years. Surely, we have established voting processes and a well documented voters' list, havent we?


My first shock was the fact that our Election Commission could decide that it would 'pick and choose' whether to implement any of the recommendations of Parliamentary Select Committee. Several excuses were given. I thought that was arrogance and refusal to acknowledge their potential problems. Unless, Election Commission can rebut and prove that the Parliamentary Select Committee is wrong in its recommendations, it should implement all the recommendations immediately. It is for the good of our country.


My second shocker came with the incompleteness of Parliamentary Select Committee's reviews and recommendations. Have they not done their job as parliamentarians?


According to this gentleman, called Ong Kian Ming, there are 10 more major problems in our Election Commission's electoral roll on top of the 22 recommendations by the Parliamentary Select Committee. He stated openly that "the [Parliamentary] report fails to acknowledge significant problems that have to do with the electoral roll, many of which are already well known, and seems to limit the scope of checking the accuracy of the electoral roll to a few not very useful parameters". Huh?!? Election Commission is probably not doing a good job, but the  Parliamentary Select Committee is also not doing a decent job? Is this real or not? I kept asking myself.


Mr Ong went on to elaborate the 10 problems:


The 10 problems are:

1) Voters who are above 85 years old.

2) Inconsistencies in the gender indicated by the IC number and EC data.

3) Voters with the same name, and some with the same/similar date of birth.

4) Voters who have IC addresses with the state of birth as ‘7x', indicating that they are born overseas.

5) Voters in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur in the third quarter and fourth quarter of 2011 who do not have house addresses, even though other newly-registered voters in the same locality have house addresses.

6) Postal voters who are registered using their regular ICs.

7) Spouses of police who are registered as postal voters.

8) Spouses of army/police voters who are of the same gender.

9) Army and police voters who are above the retirement age.

10) New army and police postal voters who are above the recruitment age.




I may not be an election expert but I surely think that the 10 major problems sound like big problems. The details are exciting and you should really click on this link and read them. The details are quite exciting. No less than watching a good movie.

Ong Kian Ming

There are another 2 articles by Mr Ong Kian Ming in Malaysiakini on top of his first part of 10 major problems. I suggest that you use your newspaper money to subscribe to Malaysiakini to read more. I could not wait and immediately registered with Malaysiakini for further reading. It actually costs less than monthly subscription of daily newspaper! I attach the links for the other 2 articles:


http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/194435 (10 major problems. Part 2)


http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/195823 (further problems in addition to 10 major problems. How many more problems are there ':-(  )


Mr Ong Kian Ming may just be a lecturer, I am sure he loves his country so dearly that he is willing to spend so much time to dig out the 'dirt' in the voters' list. Based on my work  experience, these works take ages to do and damn meticulous. Bravo to this gentleman. If you feel really stingy and still wish to read further, perhaps you can contact Mr Ong Kian Ming and see if he is willing to share some information with you at the following email: im.ok.man@gmail.com  (Please dont get angry at me, Mr Ong. I admire you so much that i actually have to share it this posting)


Hey, if you only want free information and can not take any trouble, I have also attached here some other links on problems of voters' list:


http://www.bersih.org/?p=4754


http://www.mmail.com.my/story/electoral-roll-rife-errors


http://1christians.blogspot.com/2012/06/strange-case-of-recycled-ics-in-sabah.html  (I am not a christian and the article has nothing to do with religion. Its about voters. Go ahead and read)


Our Election Commission has also come out to say that our electoral roll is the cleanest in the world. 


It is not easy to believe our Election Commission on such a claim. It is only recently that the big boss of  police, Inspector General of Police, claimed that Malaysia is the safest country in Southeast Asia. Seriously?!?  I wonder what Singapore and Brunei have to say about this.


I now understand why my friends are disheartened with the authenticity or effectiveness of the our election. The question is how many percent of the voters' list is bad? 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% or more? I do not have an answer to this. We have about 13 million registered voters in this country. Any percentage of illegitimate voters is bad.


I wish to advise my friends not to give up. One must not let status quo remains if one thinks that the status quo is bad. A rightful citizen like us must do something to right what is wrong. We dont want to leave any of the wrong for our children or younger generation. We are not here to pass burden to them.


I agree that we cant do much as each of us only has one vote against potentially thousands or even millions of illegitimate voters. Let's not be despair. We, the rightful voters, can be an insurmountable force if we act collectively. Each and every one of us must come out to vote. We must not stay at home disheartened. If we come out to cast our votes and we vote in the right direction for this country. No matter what percentage of errors, problems and seemingly manipulations in voters' list, we shall prevails. We, the rightful voters, still form the majority voters, at least up to this point. Size matters now.


Let's act now to send a signal so strong that no percentage of errors, problems and alleged abuses can alter the direction of this signal. Each of us should probably do more than just casting a vote. We should at least convince 2 persons close to us that everyone should come out to cast this very important vote in the coming general election. These 2 persons in turn should each persuades another 2 persons close to them to vote. We have to make this vote counts. We have to make this vote cleans up the voters' list or electoral rolls. We vote for a government that is serious in cleaning up the voters' list. We, the rightful citizens, of the country cannot decide what is good for our country if the voters' list is not clean and free from problems.

There are more heroes after all

History is a study of study of past events, in particular in human affair. History explains what has happened in the developments of human affairs of a place. It is unfortunate when a history is not necessarily stated in an manner that is objective and fair to all the parties to it. History is often told  from the perspective of the teller. That person conveys it in the ways that he want the rest of the people to believe.

I can agree that a person, a company or an private organisation does that from their own points of view. They have their own vested private interest to do it. The question whether a government of a country can manage historical information as such that it only benefits the ruling party or the government in office. A government is a government of the people, by the people and for the people in a democratic country. It should only act in the interest of the people and portray historical events fairly for all the people of the country. In real life, I suspect there are not many countries that are willing to do that, especially when one ruling party has been in power for a few decades.


Hero is typically some one who is admired for courage or noble qualities. All heroes in a country should be recognized. Heroes in a country must have a place in the history of that country. Malaysia has many heroes over the course of its history. Heroes of the countries can be political leaders, sports persons, inventors, scientists or even heroic  personality of ordinary man and woman. You can find a book on 100 Malaysian Heroes launched in 2012. You can find the news here: http://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Wajah_Wira, and here: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/4/25/nation/11168827&sec=nation


In my view, there are many more  heroes in Malaysia. The book, 100 Malaysian Heroes, perhaps only tells one side of the story . I can instantly name 2 recent heroes of this country, Ambiga Sreenevasan and  Abdul Samad bin Muhammad Said  (Pak Samad). 

Ambiga Sreenevasan

  

Pak Samad

You can read about the background of Ambiga here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiga_Sreenevasan and Pak Samad here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Samad_Said .

I came across these 2 personalities several weeks before Bersih 2.0 in 2011. Both of them played very important roles in shaping and leading the Bersih coalition to strive for clean and fair election in Malaysia. I was very curious why would a 74 years old man still wanted to walk and march under of the hot sun with thousands of much younger Malaysians during the Bersih 2.0 rally.Pak Samad is a national laureate. I find Ambiga's involvement more understandable because she is an ex-president of Bar Council and active civil activist. After all, she is only in her 50's.

Since 2011, i started to read more about news of Pak Samad and Ambiga. Their roles become even more prominent during the Bersih 3.0 rally in April this year. I began to admire the cause that they are striving to accomplish. They were not spending all those hours organizing Bersih rally for themselves. They risked tear gas, chemically laced water canon and police arrests. Should everything goes well, they still have to endure hot sun and possibly rain through the rally. It rained during Bersih 2.0 and in contrast the sun was scorching hot during Bersh 3.0. In both instances, water canon, tear gas and arrests were all widely used by the police.

The key question is why are they still actively pursuing clean and fair election under the name of Bersih?

For me, the answer is in the few words uttered by both of them which i have put in quotes below:


Pak Samad

“Some people have told me that I have changed as a person. But I know I am still the same. I do what I do, say what I say and write what I write because I don’t want to die useless. I want to be able to die knowing that I did something for my country, even if it’s a small part, to bring about the change I hope to see in my lifetime.”

You can read more  here: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2012/02/20/i-dont-want-to-die-useless/

Ambiga

"I didn’t do enough to fight the rot that was setting in which is the result of what we are seeing today. We should have stood up to corruption and abuse of power much earlier. I think we have failed our next generation because it is the responsibility of everyone to make sure that things go right."

You can read more here: http://www.mmail.com.my/story/unfinished-business-bersih-30; http://www.thesundaily.my/news/388234

These are some of the most inspiring words that i have seen for years. They put tears into my eyes. For someone to say this, it takes a lot of belief in what they are doing and the determination to do the right thing. Do you not think that they are so selfless? Are they not  a form of true heroes of this country?

Pak Samad and Ambiga may not have their names in our history books. They may be branded as 'bad persons' for causing  chaos and losses to petty traders. For those who read, we know better who Ambiga and Pak Samad are. Perhaps, our children will not learn about them in their schools but I am sure that they have a place in my children's history of Malaysia. I will make sure that they learnabout Pak Samad and Ambiga. The heroes that inspired hundreds of thousand of Malaysians in the pursuit to have a clean and fair election, and a cleaner, fairer, better Malaysia.

I JUST WANT A BETTER PLACE FOR MY CHILDREN

I am an ordinary Malaysian living a fairly ordinary life. I have a small family. I see my children grow up by the days. Like any father, I wish to give them good guidance to life, good education, good health, happy environment to live in, etc. These are the basics of many, if not all, family expectations from the parents and perhaps from the children.

I was born to this country by god's creation. I have a fantastic father and an incredibly loving mother. I lived a  healthy rural lifestyle. I was destined to be born to a rural family. I am happy to live in this country. I had friends from all the main races in the country. They were all  very nice people to be with and to befriend. I could not understand racial tensions. I grew up thinking that human beings come in different skin colour tone. We pronounced slightly differently but we understood each other fine. Our differences did not stop us from becoming the closest of friends.

Growing up in this country means that I have been exposed to all kinds of food available here. Be it any type of food from whichever ethnic background, I have learned how to enjoy it. Most types of the food available in this country suit my taste very well. I have adopted most of them as my kind of food. I am happy eating the food in Malaysia.

I once worked overseas for a better paid job but I decided to come back to Malaysia after a few years to be back with my family. It was a new and pleasant experience working overseas. It was however not fun to me that i had to be so far away from my parents most of the time. I could call and talk them but it was not the same as physically spending time with them. In recent years, I hear that more Malaysians have started to find career opportunities in foreign countries. It seems that well rewarded jobs with good prospects are getting harder to come by. I am hanging on to my stable job now but several friends of mine have tried to seek greener pastures outside this country. Some of them have decided to settle down overseas for long term, while a few have come back for their families. As far as I know, none of them come back because of better prospect or better pay package. One way or another, for those that have come back, they have taken some form of pay cut or lowered lifestyles.

I love my children like all other parents. I wish to have them near me and spend time with them. I see them grow up. It follows that I want to grow old with them around me. I want to share their good and bad times even in their adulthood. As I grow older, I wish to be able to be near them to see them grow old too. I believe this is a characteristic found in pretty much all families in this country. Who would wish to be far away from their loved ones?

Should the trend of younger generations having to seek career opportunities overseas continues, I fear for my children. They may have to seek career opportunities overseas in a few years' time. That means that they will be far away from me. I hate to think of that. I have always wanted my children to be close to me. It is important to have them physically near me too.

Or course, one can argue that I can travel out of the country and stay with my children overseas. I hate to think that I have to take an aeroplane just to see my children. How can that be? Children and parents are part and parcel of a family. A distance that require taking aeroplane is a distance too far for me and my children. It is awful to think that the requirement to see one's children is to take an aeroplane.

When I get to see my children and spend time with them overseas, I will have to miss my favourate food like roti canai, fried kuey teow, beef rendang, etc. When I get to eat my favourate food from my favourate stalls and restaurants, I do not get to see, hug and hear from my children in person. These are inconciliable realities that parents with children working overseas have to accept. This harsh fact can be undone if there are more good career prospects in this country. 

There is another setback for parents that have to take an aeroplane to see their children. The parents will have to live and get used to the lifestyles in a place that their children work. The need to adapt to new different food tastes, overall living habits and possibly weather seems inevitable. Why does it have to be this way?

When I was young, I would not have chosen anywhere else in this world to live for the longest time that i could remember. At my matured age now, I still love this country as much. I want  to live the rest of my life in this country. However, I will definitely not want to hamper my children's career prospect by keeping them in the country, potentially at their expense. Like all other parents, I want my children to have the best career prospects which are available to them. I must not be the achilles heel of my children's future. I am also too Malaysian to stay away for a long period without eating my favourite food from my favourite stalls and restaurants.

I just want to have my favourite fried kuey teow and, at the same time, spend good family time with my children. Is that too much to ask of our government?