Wah Lau Snips

I wonder who wrote this gem of a lead paragraph in today’s NST online:

“Makkal Sakthi (People Power), which was instrumental in turning the tide against Barisan Nasional in Perak in last year's elections, has suddenly come out in support of the BN state government.”

Whoever it was managed to capture my attention enough to continue scrolling down the “news” piece to see exactly the justification for such findings.

Turned out this "Makkal Sakthi" refers to two blokes and some odd 30 people who profess their support to the controversially installed BN Perak State government.

Ahh…

Unbelievable that NST’s news editors let this one go.

The headline ("Makkal Sakhti" speaks up for BN) and its subsequent lead suggests image of thousands turning out in public wearing tee-shirts with Dr Zambry’s mug and carrying banners shouting “Long live Barisan!”.

Or some shit likewise.

Not 30-odd people at the plush confines of the Menteri Besar office.

(Of course, unlike the Makkal Sakhti showcase of old this bunch would NOT have to face a brace of baton-carrying anti riot troopers and water cannons.)

Perhaps it was a really dry day* for Perak for this piece to have seen “online” print.

Or perhaps it was a tongue-in-cheek news to lightens up NST readers?

There are, after all, apostrophe signs in the headlined "Makkal Sakhti" and there is also these cute verbatim quotes:

"We were not paid to do so. We did it freely. The report on a blog which said we were paid between RM10 and RM50 and provided with T-shirts to show our support to BN is untrue.

"We are businessmen and we pay our workers RM70 a day."

Huh???

Makkal Sakhti was the battle cry for a community which felt itself long marginalized.

Yes it is true that there is (or more correctly, will be) a political entity going by the same name, but to equate the two as one is quite incredulous.

On hindsight, I shouldn’t have bothered with the “news” after all.

Now, that would be Makkal Sakhti.

* Dry days: Days without any worthy printable story. No accident, no crime, no politicans trying to make some headlines, no NGO PCs. No jack-shit dry days provide real tests of patience for newsmen, especially those in the state with the Editor's Desk due to call sometime during lunch for a synopsis of non-existant news. A bummer of day.