MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek derided Saturday’s Bersih rally turnout and claimed his party could put 50,000 people on the streets anytime.“To gather ten or twenty thousand to demonstrate is nothing great. MCA can organised 50,000 if you want me to do it, anytime,” he told reporters at Wisma MCA here today.
“But we must demonstrate for a cause. We should not demonstrate for very flimsy reasons, that the electoral roll is tainted and not clean.”
Dr Chua said it was clear there was a political agenda behind Bersih 2.0 as Pakatan Rakyat (PR) has not made any moves since 2008 to amend the Election Act in Parliament despite insisting that such reforms are needed.
He said the opposition was just trying to “keep the anti-government momentum” and ruin the economy so that they could claim that the Barisan Nasional (BN) government was ineffective.
Dr Chua also claimed that there were not many Chinese at the rally and those who showed up on Saturday were opposition party members.
“There may be a sprinkling of people who just joined in but that does not reflect the majority of the people,” he said.
He added that it was clear the rally lacked widespread support, pointing out that the demonstraters represented only a fraction of Malaysians.
On the Tung Shin Hospital,the police had to fire tear gas near Tung Shin Hospital to protect its patients from Bersih 2.0 protesters who sought refuge there, Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek has said.
The MCA president said the situation should be viewed “in totality”, pointing out that the police would be accused of not doing their job had they decided against dispersing the crowd of protesters that ran into the hospital.
Bersih estimates that 50,000 people showed up for the rally while police have said there were only 6,000.
The street demonstration went ahead without police permission, resulting in nearly 1,700 arrests, scores injured and the death of a PKR leader’s husband.
The electoral reform movement decided to take to the streets despite previously accepting Najib’s offer to move the street rally to a stadium after the government refused to allow the gathering to take place in Stadium Merdeka.
This came after the Yang di-Pertuan Agong called on the government a week ago to execute its duties fairly and for it to meet Bersih and discuss the issue of free and fair elections.
The first Bersih rally in November 2007 also saw tens of thousands being dispersed by police with tear gas and water cannons.
It was said to have been a key factor in a general election called four months later, which saw BN lose its customary two-thirds hold of Parliament after ceding 82 seats and five state governments in its worst showing ever at the polls.
http://www.kl-today.com/2011/07/mca-can-gather-50k-people-too/
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