Monday, October 6, 2008

Lim Guan Eng and Others - Flying In With An Air of Change!

The weekend on October 4-5 was quite eventful for Sibu, though the functions were completely blacked out by the local English dailies. In sharp contrast was the local Chinese dailies which took up to extensively and prominently cover the DAP's events.

DAP's heavyweight leaders from West Malaysia flew in to partake of DAP Sarawak's 30th anniversary celebration dinner at Sibu Trade & Exhibition Centre on Oct. 4. A total of 220 tables were sold out, making the grand evening a glittering occasion. I learned from See Hua Daily News that Lim Guan Eng, Dato' Ngeia Koo Ham and the others delivered high-powered speeches during the evening function. Besides touching on some heated issues, they also dwelt on their experiences of governing the five PR-states. Some participants told me it was a refreshing evening.

On the following day, there was a New Land Policy Forum organised by DAP Sibu in response to the latest spiky land renewal fees. The thorny issue casts a chill over agricultural land owners who are required to fork out sizable sums to renew their soon-to-expire agricultural land. This issue looks like pretty sticky and I don't expect it to be resolved with ease.

The English readers in Sarawak have been deprived of an opportunity to have access to the news which is of equal concern and importance to them as to the Chinese readers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Correction required here, Tony. The Land Forum was not organised by DAP Sibu but by YB Wong Ho Leng himself in his capacity as the people's representative. That is why it was known as "Wong Ho Leng's Forum". During the forum, Wong Ho Leng himself did make sure to inform the people that it was not a political forum but his own forum for the people.

Tony Hii said...

anonymous, thank you for your timely rectification of my error.