By Clara Chooi (Malaysian Insider)
IPOH, Jan 20 — The Perak Pakatan Rakyat today launched a 15-day campaign called “Remembering One Black Perak” to mark the one-year anniversary of the “power grab” by the Barisan Nasional in February 6 last year.
Ousted Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin (picture) and his comrades in the PR will be fanning out across the state to remind the people of Perak of the events that had led to the fall of the PR government.
“We want the people to remember the tragedy of February 6 in the power grab by the BN. We are reminding the people that it has been one whole long year since it happened and we want the people to know of the negative effects it has had on the country,” he told a press conference at the launch of the campaign at his house in Sungai Rokam here today.
Nizar said that PR representatives would be keeping the people abreast of the events that had transpired throughout the year since the power grab.
“We will remind them that in these past 11 months, we have been running a parallel government to the BN and that despite our limitations, we have proceeded to work as the government that they had chosen,” he said.
PAS’s Dr Khairuddin Abd Malek, who chairs the committee for the campaign, said that among the programmes to be held during the 15-day campaign were essay writing competitions, speech competitions, cultural shows, a skit on how the PR’s Speaker V Sivakumar had been removed from his post, and two large “democracy expeditions”, which will span the entire length and breadth of the state.
The expeditions, he said, would begin from the PR’s “Tree of Democracy” where it held its controversial “al-fresco” state assembly sitting on March 3.
“From there, we will travel in a coach through the various constituencies. One expedition will go through to Jelapang, Kuala Kangsar, Bagan Serai, Taiping, Changkat Jering and several other places before it ends in Parit Buntar.
“The other expedition will go through constituencies like Batu Gajah, Tapah, Bidor, Behrang and then end at Teluk Intan,” he said.
Dr Khairuddin added that the committee also had plans to organise a “Majlis Pendengaran Syariah” whereby Syariah experts would explain what he claimed were the anti-Islam elements of the power grab.
“What we aim to do is to remind people about the truth of the crisis of democracy in Perak. We also want to inject spirit into the people to be brave enough to reject the undoings of the BN,” he said.
The PR government officially fell into the hands of the BN on Feb 6 last year when current Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abd Kadir took his oath of office in a ceremony before the Sultan of Perak at Istana Iskandariah in Kuala Kangsar.
The ceremony was held two days after Bota assemblyman Datuk Nasarudin Hashim, who had quit Umno to join PKR, suddenly returned to Umno, and three others, Changkat Jering assemblyman Mohd Osman Mohd Jailu, Behrang assemblyman Jamaluddin Mohd Radzi and Jelapang assemblyman Hee Yit Foong left their respective parties in the PR to become BN-friendly Independents.