Ambiga speaking at the ANU law school in Canberra on November 2, 2011.
Bersih 2.0 chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan has challenged the Najib administration to invite international observers for the next general election to demonstrate its confidence in free and fair elections, saying that a Mahathir-era precedent would easily enable this to recur.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has set up an all-party parliamentary select commission to look into demands for electoral reforms, including the eight listed by Bersih 2.0 for its July 9 rally.
Ambiga speaking at the ANU law school in Canberra on November 2, 2011.
“If you say the (electoral) system is OK, get international observers. Prove it to us,” Ambiga urged the Malaysian government, in an address at a packed Australian National University (ANU) law school theatre filled with students, lawyers and policy officials.
“Bring in the international observers, let them observe our elections. That’s my call to the Malaysian government.
“If you say your system is fine and that it doesn’t need (electoral) reform before the 13th general election, I dare you to bring in international observers. And let them determine if our elections are free and fair,” said the Bersih 2.0 leader, who received a rock-star welcome at her ANU lecture.
Ambiga’s appearance at the ANU law school here this week concluded her lecture tour of Australia following several earlier engagements in Melbourne and Sydney.
She also held a raft of meetings in Canberra with Australian political leaders from various parties and met with foreign policy officials in the parliamentary zone, highlighting Bersih 2.0’s campaign for electoral reform and its eight key demands.
Her speech recounting the July 9 demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur and in over 30 cities worldwide, and her explanation of Bersih 2.0’s campaign for democratisation, was frequently interrupted by applause.
She was also mobbed afterwards by students and other Malaysians eager to photograph and record their meeting with her in Canberra.
The ANU organisers said hundreds from around the world had logged on to watch Ambiga’s talk and the discussion afterwards on a livestreaming service over the Internet, and a few questions from viewers abroad were answered by the Bersih 2.0 leader in the lecture hall.
She had earlier spent most of the bright spring day up on Capital Hill, inside the sprawling federal Parliament House complex meeting several Australian parliamentarians, including the deputy opposition leader and shadow foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop and the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee chairman Michael Danby.
The Bersih 2.0 leader also met with foreign policy officials and regional specialists in separate meetings.
She is understood to have explained Bersih 2.0’s eight key demands for electoral reform in Malaysia to these Australians, and provided context and her analysis of the challenges of Malaysia’s democracy in the febrile pre-election climate.
It is also understood that she has been invited on behalf of Bersih 2.0 to provide testimony on the record at the next sitting of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Australian Bersih 2.0 co-ordinator, David Teoh, said the meetings with parliamentarians and other Australian officials were also informed by the “warm bilateral ties between Malaysia and Australia”, and in that context, the Australians had raised concerns over Malaysia’s human rights obligations, its support for democratisation measures such as the proposed electoral reforms of Bersih 2.0, and the economic challenges shared by both countries in the stormy year ahead.
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After tarnishing her own image in Seksualiti Merdeka fiasco where her true colour is revealed, Ambiga is back in BERSIH. But it is too late already. The damage has already been done. For the Muslims especially, you have been warned. Think twice before you want to be associated with her.
International observers may not be enough, send in the international troops may be more appropriate because BN will be very afraid and reluctant to have a free and fair election, ballot boxes from the remote Malaysian jungles are also very hard to be monitored and many more election frauds need to be cleaned up
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