The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| Posted: 05 Oct 2012 05:27 PM PDT 6 OKT — Dalam sidang akhbar di Dewan Perhimpunan Cina Kuala Lumpur dan Selangor (KLSCAH) baru-baru ini, Pengerusi Bersama Gabungan Pilihan Raya Bersih dan Adil (Bersih 2.0), Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan memberitahu bahawa empat orang ahli jawatankuasa penaja gabungan tersebut diganggu ketika mahu keluar negara oleh pegawai Imigresen. Dr Wong Chin Huat, Andrew Khoo, Yeoh Yang Poh dan Maria Chin Abdullah kesemuanya ditahan oleh pegawai Imigresen ketika mahu keluar negara secara berasingan dan terpaksa menyelesaikan urusan imigresen secara manual berbanding orang ramai yang boleh menggunakan lorong automatik. "Apabila ditahan pegawai Imigresen diberi amaran bahawa mereka berada dalam pemerhatian polis sebelum dilepaskan. "Saya akan lihat sama ada saya akan melalui pengalaman sama apabila keluar negara minggu hadapan. "Ini merupakan satu cara gangguan terbaru kerajaan Malaysia terhadap perjuangan untuk menuntut pilihan raya bebas dan adil," kata Ambiga. Seorang aktivis mahasiswa memberitahu saya beberapa minggu lalu beliau disenarai hitam daripada memasuki salah sebuah negeri di Malaysia Timur dan mempunyai masalah di Imigresen Malaysia. Jika benar ini adalah cara gangguan terbaru untuk melemahkan sesuatu penentangan, ini merupakan satu tindakan yang tidak bijak. Bukankah tindakan seumpama ini akan mengundang lebih banyak kemarahan? Bersih 2.0 hanya menuntut sekelumit perubahan dilakukan dalam proses pilihan raya di Malaysia. Mereka tidak menuntut revolusi sistem pilihan raya seperti menukar sistem pilihan raya "first past the post" (FPTP) kepada sistem single non-transferable vote (SNTV). Bersih 2.0 tidak meminta pilihan raya perdana menteri secara langsung sepertimana pilihan raya presiden langsung sepertimana dilaksanakan oleh Indonesia. Di KLSCAH, Ambiga turut menawarkan kerjasama daripada Bersih 2.0 untuk membantu Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya (SPR) untuk membersihkan daftar pemilih. Ertinya, Bersih 2.0 sudah semakin realistik. SPR harus memandang positif tawaran Ambiga ini dan memanggil mereka berbincang tentang bagaimana Bersih 2.0 boleh membantu SPR membersihkan daftar pemilih sehingga semua pihak berpuas hati. Pada pandangan saya, bantuan terbesar yang Bersih 2.0 boleh tawarkan adalah menyediakan seramai mungkin sukarelawan. Mengaudit daftar pemilih bukan semudah bercakap atau mengetik papan kekunci komputer. Undi menyeluruh daftar pemilih akan memakan masa dan tenaga yang banyak serta berkos tinggi. Jika Bersih 2.0 boleh menyediakan sukarelawan seramai 500,000 orang untuk membantu audit daftar pemilih, sejumlah besar wang pembayar cukai dapat dijimatkan. Tuntutan Bersih 2.0 seperti hentikan politik kotor tidak masuk akal untuk SPR selesaikan. Bersih 2.0 juga harus waras. Politik kotor dilakukan oleh kedua-dua Barisan Nasional (BN) dan Pakatan Rakyat (PR), tiada siapa yang suci dalam politik kerana semuanya berobjektifkan kuasa. BN juga harus terlibat dalam kempen memartabatkan pilihan raya di Malaysia. Katakanlah satu hari nanti BN hilang kuasa dan pilihan raya di Malaysia masih belum direformasikan, tidakkah BN menyesal tidak melakukan perubahan sewaktu berkuasa? Selesaikan segera isu mudah yang dituntut tentang sistem pilihan raya Malaysia. Sesiapa yang bakal berkuasa, biar rakyat yang tentukan. Itu hak rakyat sama ada mahu mengekalkan BN atau memberi peluang kepada PR. Yang penting padang itu harus sama rata. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| So what movie do you want to watch next? Posted: 05 Oct 2012 05:11 PM PDT OCT 6 — I've been spending quite a lot of time in Singapore the past month or so. Being the film geek that I am, of course I used this opportunity to catch as many interesting movies as I could during my stay there. Having earlier spent a few days there in August to catch The Beach Boys in concert, I already managed to catch Wes Anderson's latest film and surprise summer hit "Moonrise Kingdom", which was still playing in some cinemas there as late as last week. Anyone who has followed the career of Wes Anderson will surely know that his movies are basically made to be seen on the big screen, in glorious widescreen as he's known for packing every inch of the screen with information. Some critics will even go so far as to call his style as not having any "character depth", but more relying on "character design" to convey emotions and information about any particular character. The only film of his that did play in Malaysian cinemas, as far as I can remember, was "The Royal Tenenbaums", which I saw twice in the cinemas. So it was in Singapore that I had to catch his other films on the big screen, like the trip I made there just to see "The Darjeeling Limited." Earlier this year I was even nuts enough to make a day trip there just to see the Indonesian action sensation "The Raid: Redemption" on the big screen, afraid that it might not even make it to cinemas here or that it will be heavily censored or even dubbed into English. Spending a few weeks sporadically there, I realised that the movie choices over there sort of resemble the ones in the United Kingdom when I was a student there. Over here we're more or less spoilt for choice when it comes to Hollywood blockbusters, with us getting almost all the big Hollywood releases the same time they open in America, and in some cases even a few days earlier. What I realised when I was browsing through the movie listings to check out what I'd want to see is that in Singapore they don't bring in as many blockbusters as we do here, and some of them one or two months later than us. But, they have quite a healthy variety of other titles, from arthouse movies to even mid-level indie titles making the rounds in their local cinemas. I was basically astonished to see the poster for "The Taste of Money", the latest film from Korean auteur Im Sang Soo (who last made the hit remake "The Housemaid") in normal cinemas there, not arthouse ones. They even had "Gangs Of Wasseypur", a two-part Indian gangster film that played at Cannes playing in some cinemas there. And I can't even begin to tell you how pleased I was to be able to catch Oliver Stone's latest film "Savages", beautifully projected on the biggest screen in the cineplex that I went to. The amount of sex and violence in it will probably mean that it won't be making its way to cinemas here because of our strict censorship, but I somehow doubt it will make it here anyway if we didn't have that censorship hurdle simply because it's the sort of film that people won't know how to promote here, because it's definitely not your typical blockbuster. It's a movie (an excellent one at that, easily one of Stone's best and hands down one of the year's most exuberant and entertaining) that lies somewhere in between your typical commercial thriller and Stone's trademark "issue" movies, albeit wrapped in some seriously delicious genre (and eye) candy. More astonishing though was when I saw that one of the movies I most wanted to see this year, the latest one from Hong Kong indie star Pang Ho Cheung (who earlier this year released the bittersweet "Love In The Buff", sequel to one of my favourite romances of recent times "Love In The Puff") titled "Vulgaria", was also playing. As the title already suggests, it's a movie that's shamelessly vulgar, with some of the most hilariously dirty verbal jokes that you'll ever hear in Asian movies, and not to mention running gags involving sex with a mule, fellatio using pop rocks candy and more. It is absolutely vulgar, and oh so very funny that even the fact that it was dubbed into Mandarin (as opposed to its original Cantonese, why lah?) did not deter the almost packed cinema hall from laughing out loud at every dirty joke thrown at us. Both this and "Savages" were rated 21, a classification that's yet to exist here in Malaysia, but if creating this can mean us having access to more films that adults might want to see, I say why the hell not? If neighbouring Singapore, with its smaller population compared to us, can afford to have a variety of movie distributors bringing in a wide variety of movies into cinemas there (don't even get me started on their DVD releases — they have beautifully packaged and extras-stacked official releases of films like "Melancholia", "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and "Animal Kingdom" for heaven's sake!), then surely we can afford to do the same, can't we? * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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