Final Stretch

Yes, folks, it's the final stretch of the race. The day after tomorrow will be polling day. The clowns have been very busy with their respective acts, and I can imagine that they must be extremely exhausted by now.

I was having my nasi campur during lunch at Gaya Street on Tuesday when I was surprised to see Christina Liew walked into the coffee shop. She had a whole bunch of leaflets in her hand. She had a few assistants accompanying her; one of them held the PKR flag. Liew shook hands with those in the coffee shop. I had my share of handshake too. When she arrived at my table, extending her hand, I smiled kindly to her but said nothing. I merely nodded my head, and she said, "I know!" And yes, I received the leaflet which contained important justifications for voting opposition.

Last week, we had another Liew who came to the office. He too had leaflets with justifications for voting BN. But he did not bring along any flag.

During past elections, we used to have poster wars all over the city. Not to mention an amazing amount of leaflets which were distributed to practically everyone in town—including all those illegals who were residing in Sabah as Malaysians (They are still residing in Sabah up to now—in fact, even more than ever). Then the countless of ceramahs and visits to the grassroot level.

This time round there is a different feeling about the whole election process. They still have the ceramahs and visits to the rakyat. But I have a feeling it's much lesser than before. Times have changed—the BN no longer has the clear edge as before. With the advent of modern technology, the oppositions are campaigning through the internet these days.

And believe you me, the avalanche of emails that have been flooding my emailbox these last 2 weeks have been amazing. In fact, I have been receiving the same (forwarded) emails several times from different people, some of whom I have never heard of before! Of course there are those forwarded messages on youTube. Then not to forget text messages on my cellphone.

I think no one can escape from the barrages of information. All sorts of ideas—some are contained in poems; some in songs; some in pictorial reports. Mind you, these are informative materials. Before this I didn't know much about the multi-million mansions owned by some ma cai of the VIPs. If the ma cai are that rich, just imagine how much more richer are those VIPs!

I have made up my mind long ago who to vote for; or rather which party to vote for. All these campaignings, ceramahs and handshakes from the VIPs will not shake my decision. I don't give a hoot about the politicians who are running for office. Politicians are all the same. Their first concern when they get into office is to fill up their own pockets. We Sabahans had a Chief Minister under the ill-formulated rotation system some years ago. Within a timeframe of only 2 years as the Chief Minister, he was able to amass millions! But of course he threw away a major portion of those millions in a London casino. In fact, he ended up owing many more millions after that, having paid up millions and millions of Ringgit, the source of which no one knows up to now.

It will be a long night this Saturday. I'm gonna keep the coffee warm the whole night through. But I think we will all know our next Government in the early evening; the show's gonna be over well before midnight.