KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12: Amidst talk of voter apathy in the state-level elections in six states in Peninsula Malaysia, a father of six did an exemplary deed: he crisscrossed five states to enable he and his wife to vote at two locations!
Dennis Lim from Sg Long near Kajang had strategised what he would do for the elections: First he was to be at a polling station in Balakong near Cheras before it opened at 8.00 am for his wife, Winnie Tan, to vote. Then, both of them would leave Balakong for Penang for their next mission. They succeeded in their mission.
Winnie got out of the polling station at around 8.30 am. They then raced in their zippy two-seater roadster to reach Penang in about three hours. And Dennis came out of the polling station within minutes!
“Everything done in four hours! We did this for our children’s future, our country’s future and to exercise our right as citizens of this country,” said a proud Dennis, who is with a nation-wide vehicle-related service entity.
For Lee Su Anne, a marketing manager at an e-commerce company in Kuala Lumpur, she had already bought an ETS ticket to return by train to Bukit Mertajam to vote today. But she was suddenly called to Singapore for a business meeting just before polling day. And what was Su Anne’s decision in the face of all this?
“She flew straight from Singapore to Penang after her meeting instead,” said her proud father Lee Weng Phoon. “All is not lost as she had a 75 per cent refund for her unused ETS ticket. And she’s returning to KL with her friends from Penang by ETS to catch Jacky Cheung’s concert in Bukit Jalil tomorrow night.”
The stories of Dennis, Winnie and Su Anne are just a small fraction of what many right-thinking people are doing as citizens of Malaysia: to exercise their right to vote and ensure that democracy is upheld for the betterment and progress of our country.
–WE