Malaysia Decides: GE 2013

A Day of Reckoning

Early in the morning 0745 we headed towards Michelle's polling station. As she knew her room number to ballot, she was done within 15 minutes. For those who had to checking with polling officials on such details, they were in for a long wait. Meanwhile her mum and I hung around a nearby coffee shop.

Once Michelle was done, we headed down towards her mum's polling station which was located near Jalan Mersing. Being the skillful driver that Michelle was, we had some small issues to getting there as the dual carriage way was packed with cards on both sides. Her mum cut the queue by saying "leg pain" and finished balloting within 15 minutes as well. The queue at her mum's polling station has no option of fast track for those who knew their room number. After all this was done we headed to the old house. The dogs were having a respite from the morning sun by sleeping in and behind a cement pipe.

Here we can see the indelible ink being used to mark Michelle's finger. Supposedly the silver nitrate present in the ink will prevent it from being washed off by ordinary means (water, soap, thinner, etc). This is something I would love to see if it is so.

Said good bye to Kluang and we left to head back to Johor Baru. As we left traffic at Kluang was experiencing slow traffic on the route back. Here is a shot of a big wall with the word Kluang that you can see on your way out of the town centre.

A downpour soon followed and things were so intense that at one point due to the heavy winds and rain, it was like a pail of water was being thrown at the windscreen every second or so. Visibility degraded to a point where we could not see more than 10 metres a head of the car. 2 separate accidents were see on was on the same side of the road as us and the other was across the other side.

After the downpour, fog or fine mist drifted around the hills surrounding the North-South Expressway. Looks like purple cloud mountain?

Back in Johor Baru, you can see whole rows of BN flags flanking sides of the road and I believe there must be more flags of political parties all over the place compared to the quantity of National Flags during their National Day period.

Surprisingly, getting through immigration was smooth even though we were trying to cross back around 3:30pm which was really a relief for me as I was expecting a deluge of people at the immigration side. The causeway link buses were a little slow in coming so there was quite a bit of wait for them.

Now I am back at home, watching CNA slipstream of the polls. This is going to be interesting since it is the closest fight in the history of Malaysia and voter turn out is the best in their history.


[Update: 06th May 2013]

The Pakatan Rakyat have done its best and the people of Malaysia have decided, BN retains power but PR's wins in certain areas certainly show that they are truly a force to be reckoned with especially DAP who scored their best results yet. I guess now on everyone's mind (other than accusations of fraudulent vote results) is what does Najib mean by a National Reconciliation? Hopefully it does not result in harsh crackdowns and anything else of that sort.