Rebels with causes.

I'm just so tired, sleeping late and waking up for 8:30am classes for two days straight, but I just have to blog about this - ANWAR WINS IN PERMATANG PAUH!

Looks like they did it!

Here's the news report:

Malaysia's Anwar heads for parliament after election victory

15 hours ago

PERMATANG PAUH, Malaysia (AFP) — Malaysia's opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim won a "landslide" victory Tuesday in a by-election to return him to parliament, and said he was on track to oust a weakened government.

The vote in his home state of Penang cemented a stunning comeback for Anwar, who was sacked as deputy premier a decade ago and jailed on sodomy and corruption charges widely seen as politically motivated.

"We declare victory, the margin is very huge," said Tian Chua, information chief of Anwar's Keadilan party which leads a three-member opposition alliance.

"I think it's a landslide victory," he said, adding that Anwar's share of the vote could rise as high as 70 percent.

The official tally showed Anwar had won 27,977 votes, against 13,426 for his opponent from the Barisan Nasional coalition, which has dominated Malaysian politics for half a century.

- AFP

It's actually scary that people actually get used to seeing the nonsense we see in parliament every single day, day in, day out, that they begin to forget that change is possible.

But then again, let's not forget that the only constant in this capricious world is change.

Let's just wait and see how this all unfolds. I just hope that I'll change Malaysia for the better. I really, really do.

***

In other news, a very interesting individual was spotted in Canteen B, NTU, right after my marketing lecture imploring me and my fellow university students to "open up our minds" and "to be silent no more", and to actually have the courage speak up when we have too.

And he is no other than this gentleman here:

"Be silent no more!"

Recognize this face? He's no other than Dr. Chee Soon Juan, the Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party. I first heard about him in this article published in the Far Eastern Economic Review titled "Singapore's Martyr, 'Chee Soon Juan'" (read the article here).

One thing to note is that because of that article, the Far Eastern Economic Review was sued by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as the article supposedly suggests that he and his father, Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew, were corrupt. What happened was that the FEER was then banned from Singapore, leaving me without one of my favourite debate resources in late 2006.

Damned lawsuit. I loved the FEER, as cheem as it was.

Another interesting thing worth noting is that when my classmates and I realized that it was he and his sister giving out leaflets, none of my classmates dared to approach him for a picture for fear of being made the target of government lawsuits. Are Singaporeans really that conditioned by the iron grip of the government?

All I know now is that I really hope that everything turns out right.

Hamlet's Hero out.

***

P.S. One of my classmates is an synesthete! Go google of wikipedia it if you don't know what it means! But it is sooooooooo cool!