squeak. speak. roar!

First of all, thank you.

Thank you for reading this blog, thank you for sharing your views, thank you for taking time to leave comments behind in generating a debate, thank you for voting, thank you for braving the rain, thank you for returning to your hometowns to vote, thank you for flying in from overseas to vote, thank you for volunteering to be PACAs, thank you for attempting to postal vote, thank you for your donations to various political parties, thank you for being part of civil society movements i.e. protests, boycotts and petitions, thank you for being Malaysian and thank you, thank you, thank you for your support!!!

I got my 6 hours of sleep at home after leaving the office at about 3AM. I think I need some more :)

Yesterday I woke up with mixed feelings. On March 8, I woke up to cover Tony casting his vote. I then cast my vote in my former secondary school. I got my siblings to wear yellow with me. It was awesome :) After a quick lunch at home and I headed back to the Selangor DAP HQ and was the journalist in charge of getting DAP results. The company was great and Med was kind to let me follow her around after receiving reports of multiple voters and PACAs with their authorisation letter taken away from them. I was also shown by Terence how to bust ghosts a.k.a phantom voters. It was fascinating!

I vividly remember it was about 20 minutes from the closing of the polling duration when we left SS9A. We went back to the HQ after it started raining. I mused in the car that Kit Siang would’ve said that “God is crying for justice” or that it is “washing away the sins of the government”. lol.

I had a few moments of solitude when I was in the DAP office. I was thinking what would March 9 be like. lol. Supporters started trickling in. Slowly, counting agents began SMSing back the results. It was encouraging, Tony’s votes doubles Chew Mei Fun’s for each stream. The supporters were ecstatic. Each announcement is greeted by cheers. As I sat there and observed the mood, I smiled to myself a lot.

I kept office abreast with updates that came in. Hannah is leading. Ronnie won. Prof Ramasamy won. Samy Vellu has fallen. Teresa sweeps both her seats. DAP won Serdang, Kepong, Batu Kawan, Bagan, Ipoh Timor. I had trouble keeping up and needed office to get volunteers to double check on the results.

The results I heard started appearing in the website. Updates were fast and furious, and I haven’t had dinner - it was already 9PM. People started coming up to me for updates and I told them the updates from the website came from me who heard it from them. It was rather amusing. See Tho dropped by with his camera and Maren with his video camera. Then pandemonium. Penang has fallen and the entire room roared with victorious applause.

I had goose bumps. Truth be told I I was too young to vote in the 2004 elections. After Machap and Ijok by-elections I had only known how demoralising when the results trickle in indicated that Barisan Nasional kept winning each stream. I did not know how to react to victories. But last night, I did and I truly savoured it. Tony had led by 1000 votes initially. Then it grew to 3000 and 7000. When most of the streams were revealed, the last count stood at a whopping 19,000 majority. The crowd whoop whooped and Tony, the celebrity, was already signing posters for giggly reporters and macho supporters.

I found it hilarious and teased Tony. I guess I secretly wanted to have a signed poster myself. lol. I have said this to many, should Tony win, I’d like to take credit for assisting when I wrote my question time piece :)

After the commotion died down and Tony left to get hold of the official results, I went back to my office in Bangsar. I clocked in at 11.10PM and drew a smiley face. I really was just smiling myself silly. Fauwaz laughed when I entered said, “Hey, we’re the new NST!” and asked “With all the people we know, who’s press secretary do you want to be?” I laughed :) I think I’d rather be a political secretary :)

By 2am, it was confirmed that Penang had fallen along with Selangor and Kedah. The candidates I voted for won. My friends and those I’ve had a pleasure to meet during the course of my work all won their respective seats. Message from friends overseas started pouring in congratulating me. lol. It was surreal. It was unbelievable. It was AMAZING.

Last tally from the Election Commission was 82 Parliamentary seats won by the opposition and 137 for BN. I guess EC has never learnt how to deal with extremely shocking results.I’d like to think Abdul Rashid is quaking in his boots now :)

The mainstream press coverage was extremely poor. Defending its political masters to the end but there is no worry. I was told by Chin Huat that Malaysiakini can circumvent the Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984 and go to print because the a state can grant publishing permits. I think we have five states willing to lend us a hand :)

We are all part of it and I’m glad we walked the journey together. There will be exciting times ahead and you wouldn’t believe how different our lives will be from now, especially mine in the line of work I do. However we must not lose sight of other issues we’re fighting for - a free press, an accountable government, addressing the brain drain phenomenon, upholding the constitution, abolish the ISA, free the Hindraf 5, initiate a clean judiciary, bring back local council elections etc.

I thank you all again for all your contributions and patience. The past two weeks has been intense. Congrats to all the new YBs - we still have a part to play to make sure they do their job too.

Oh I just found the perfect word to describe my feeling!

YATTAAAA!!!!!

p/s: Watch Tian celebrate :)