Penang local council elections - a foundation has been laid

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The Penang Forum 3 yesterday laid a very important foundation on the revival of the elections for the local council to select from its pool of candidates to be municipal councillors. Congratulations, you all did gave Penang state the proudest moment ever.

About three hundred over people attended the forum and voted to elect ten candidates to represent the people in both the Penang Municipal Council (MPPP) and the Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP).

At the end of the eventful moment, ten candidates were elected, with five each for MPPP and MPSP respectively.

The Penang State Executive Councillor for Local Government Chow Kon Yeow who was present lauded the event as an important foundation to restore the third vote in the state. He also said that the list of the winners would be handed over to the state government for a final selection process.

As mentioned, the foundation has been laid. The Penang state government should consider every ways and means to have it implemented on the entire municipal council as soon as possible.

We all knew that the Local Government Act 1976 is still the stumbling block onto the move to revive the local council elections but there are alternatives, and the Penang Forum had indeed demonstrated one of the alternatives and had made the even a successful one.

If the Election Commission refuses to recognize the efforts initiated by the Penang state government, then these NGOs or other electoral watch groups, such as Mafrel or Bersih could be appointed to take charge of the elections.

The other scenario is the Penang state government could also come up with the appointment of a large forum type of people's congress which will consist of all registered voters who will choose from a pool of candidates proposed and forwarded by political parties, NGOs, trade unions, chamber of commerce and religious organizations.

Have no fear of the BN who might blame you for breaking the laws. Those laws were created by the BN in order to ensure their power base expansion over the people. So if you want to return the powers to the people, we must therefore, break away from such undemocratic laws.

And if the local council elections are meant for the people, and you already had the people's mandate to do so, why not go for it? The BN created laws are there to frighten our people into submission. We had voted them out in 2008 because we wanted our voices to be heard and our views to be listened.

So, could we just put the Local Government Act 1976 aside? The Act is already a history!

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