Michelle took an interest in this event which was organised by a guy called Jolovan Wham to show support of Malaysians protesting against the recent Malaysia GE 2013 results. So we went down that day but we could not stay long as we had a prior dinner appointment over in Kovan. She was quite excited to go there and was all dressed out in black in support of the event as was I.
We arrived around 1840hrs which was 40 minutes after the supposed starting time of 1800hrs. Not much happened as people were gathering at a table set up at the near the grass mound in Hong Lim Park. They were writing messages but Michelle was too shy to write anything. The crowd was not as large as the last 2 Hong Lim Park events that I attended organised by Gilbert Goh but there was a gathering of over 100 people. I think people do support their fellow Malaysians across the borders somewhat due to a lot of interactions we have with our neighbours and our historical ties with them.
Like Malaysia, Singapore has had a ruling party that had a long run and recent events in both countries have really brought some discontent amongst its citizens to the fore and the younger generations of these 2 countries are expressing it more publicly. When will change finally come and will it come around the same time for both nations? Only time would tell. We did not stay until the night vigil and singing of the national anthems of both nations due to the dinner appointment.
Hong Lim Park May Day Event 2013
Went down to Hong Lim Park today. Once again, I went down as a Lone Ranger as all my other friend had other various things to attend to.
Here is a shot of the stage before the even started (around 10 minutes before show time). Already a sizable crowd had gathered eagerly for the event to start.
Personally I did not think it was as large as the previous 1602 rally but nevertheless I had a good time.
I came of course to mainly hear Mr M. Ravi speak. He did not disappoint. He spoke eloquently and was full of jabs to the G. He said something in Malay and another thing in Tamil during the opening portion of his speech but unfortunately I did not understand any of it! But judging by the crowd response it must have been good.
I hope that in the coming days someone will upload his speech onto YouTube and have an English translation for those portions.
I did not take too many photos as I felt that there were so many people around with their power DSLRs and super humongous lens and that those pictures they took will surely surpass in terms of quality and quantity compared to my lackluster Note 2 when they finally appear in other articles.
Nevertheless, I just had to take one as a memento when Mr M. Ravi appeared.
Here is a close up shot of the stage
As I was hanging around for the event to start, none other than Mr Tan Kin Lian popped up at my right side to ask me if I wanted a noisemaker! So here it is my memento from this event. Did not use it much as I preferred to clap my hands which was much louder. But nevertheless an interesting trinket.
All the other 10 speakers were alright but I felt the best were 2 past mid-60s uncles on the stage who spoke quite well. One of them was Mr Robert Teh. Uncle Leong as usual spoke with statistics but I felt it would be more effective if I were reading an article by him instead. At times my brain RAM would potentially get overloaded. Like the last 1602 rally, Mr Tan Jee Say has a lot to say against the ruling party, in fact among all the rest his speech was the one that was most loaded with the word P@P in it.
As for the crowd, there were a fair amount of people waving around banner with some interesting captions. Also quite a number of folks were wearing the Guy Fawkes masks ala V for Vendetta.
Midway through the event, someone in the front went ballistic and started shouting and disrupting the event for like maybe 5 minutes. He was somehow placated and things carried on. Initially the MC wanted to give that person a few minutes to speak freely on stage and say his piece but that idea was quickly withdrawn. Perhaps a new article from the MSM side could explain what in the world happened as I was too far away to catch what transpired.
In the end, it was a tiring day but I felt it was worth going down still. Once again the sky decided to let some rain drops fall but it was really short and precipitation was light and ended fairly quickly. Hopefully future events like this will be held but with great participation on the part of the people. Time to concuss. Tomorrow is another day.
[Update 02/05/2013 16:20]
Here is a ustream link of the event where M. Ravi is in it. Sadly it is only a partial upload. If i can find the full one I will put the link here
Here is the transcript of his speech
