By Cindy Tham
cindytham@malaysiavotes.com

PETALING JAYA: US presidential candidate Barack Obama appears to be able to charm the crowd fairly well on his own. Still, there is no harm in boosting his popularity by getting big names to endorse him, the most famous of whom is probably talk-show host Oprah Winfrey.

On a far less glamorous scale in Malaysia, celebrities and organisations like chambers of commerce and business councils have lent their support to parties and candidates on different occasions. This election, R. Nadeswaran, more popularly known as Citizen Nades, is hopping on the bandwagon to endorse two candidates: the Barisan Nasional-MCA’s Datuk Lee Hwa Beng who is contesting for the Kelana Jaya parliamentary seat and the DAP’s Edward Lee who is gunning for the Bukit Gasing state seat.

“I’m not endorsing the party but the individual,” Nadeswaran stressed. That explains why Nadeswaran has endorsed a candidate each from the opposition and the ruling coalition. “I don’t care which party he is from,” said the deputy editor who has been heading theSun’s special reporting desk and has a column under the well-known byline, Citizen Nades.

Nadeswaran, 56, has been covering local government issues since he was a journalist at The Malay Mail in 1978. Many of his stories have been hard-hitting of local council and state government decisions that smack of corruption, abuse of power or that are an utter waste of taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ money.

It was in the course of reporting on these that he got to know Hwa Beng and Edward, both of whom Nadeswaran believes have established a good track record in dealing with local government issues and standing up for their respective community’s interests.

“Local council affairs affect how the people vote,” Nadeswaran said. “I don’t know any other candidates and their track record well enough,” he told MalaysiaVotes.com in an interview on Feb 22. “I can’t think of anyone else. Although there are friends who are running in the election, I don’t know their track record,” he said. “But I’ve seen these two men from close quarters.”

From the grassroots
Nadeswaran got to know Edward five years ago when he started reporting on the Petaling Jaya Municipal Council (now city council). He recalled a conversation they had: “Edward told me we need independent people to represent the residents’ interests, who can speak up on behalf of the people. I said, ‘I’m with you!’”

At 59, Edward may be deemed a latecomer in politics. The retired businessman, who was in the shipping and freight forwarding business previously, only joined the DAP on Feb 1, less than two weeks before Parliament was dissolved to pave the way for the March 8 polls.

So why did he enter the fray? “I’m very concerned about where Malaysia is heading. Other than taking it up in Parliament, there are also larger issues at the local government and state assembly levels that affect the people’s lives,” he told MalaysiaVotes.com on Feb 23. “I think it’s important that since I am familiar with these issues that I contribute to make a change.”

He is taking on BN-Gerakan’s Datuk Dr Lim Thuang Seng, the incumbent for the Bukit Gasing state seat (N34) which has 33,183 voters. Lim has been the state assemblyman for the past two terms. He garnered 13,057 votes in the 2004 general election, 4,081 more than the DAP’s John Chung Yoong.

Edward is no stranger to PJ folk. He is president of the Section 5 Residents’ Association (RA) and pro-tem president of the All PJ Pro Action Committee, a coalition of RAs formed to protest against the local council’s move to raise assessment rates which the coalition said was unjustified. He has been vocal about the PJ Draft Local Plan and is part of the campaign to prevent further development on Bukit Gasing.

Edward was also the vice-chairman of the Puchong Incinerator Relocation Committee, which lobbied to stop the project following concerns about the potential health hazard and environmental impact. The RM1.5 billion project was later relocated to Broga and scrapped in July 2007 because it was too costly.

He is also part of the Coalition Against Water Privatisation, which filed for a judicial review to make public the government’s concession agreement with Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas) and the audit on its non-revenue water (NRW) reduction. Based on the deal, Syabas raised the water tariff in the Klang Valley by 15% in 2006, after it said it had succeeded in reducing NRW – lost through pilferage, leakage and faulty meters – by the required 5%, which the coalition is querying.

Edward’s attempt to move from grassroots activism to the state legislative assembly reflects the frustration some local communities have with the existing establishment.

“The RAs in PJ have been vocal in dealing with the local authority. It has come to a stage where the people must be given more voice,” he said. “I have confronted local government in the past, they have been very receptive, but in the end, they still did what they wanted to. It’s time for the people’s voice to be heard.”

Edward said he hoped to be able to make more noise as an elected representative. “If we (opposition) have sufficient members in the state assembly, we can oppose any unfair proposal to change the state laws. At the federal level, we can make changes through the private member’s bill.”

Constructive criticism
While Hwa Beng, 53, is no stranger to Subang Jaya, where he has been the state assemblyman for four terms, he now has to convince the larger Kelana Jaya parliamentary constituency to support him. Kelana Jaya (P104), which has 79,648 voters, includes the Subang Jaya and Seri Setia state seats.

There is a three-way fight for the Kelana Jaya parliamentary seat this election. Hwa Beng is facing independent candidate Lim Peng Soon, author of the motivational book Dare to Fail, and Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s Gwo Burne Loh, who took the video recording of lawyer Datuk V.K. Lingam allegedly brokering the appointment of judges in a telephone conversation with a senior judge, said to be former Chief Justice Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim. Both Lingam and Ahmad Fairuz have denied having the telephone conversation.

Nadeswaran, who has known Hwa Beng since the 1980s when he was a PJ councillor, said he was endorsing Hwa Beng for his efforts in addressing the problems faced by his constituency.

One example is Hwa Beng’s role in the decision to scrap the plan to build a food court in SS18 in Subang Jaya several years ago. As a councillor in the Subang Jaya Municipal Council, Hwa Beng chaired the public hearing on the move to set up the food court on police reserve land, Nadeswaran said. The decision to approve the food court was reversed following the objections raised at the public hearing, he added. Nadeswaran cited another example where Hwa Beng did not support the council’s decision to allow only a selected consortium of pest control operators to provide their services in Subang Jaya.

Despite all these, there will be some quarters in the constituency who think he can do more. Hwa Beng said he would have more clout in influencing policymaking if he were elected to Parliament.

Other than addressing the problems faced by the constituency, such as the request for more vernacular schools, traffic congestion and building a Light Rail Transit line without inconveniencing any neighbourhood, Hwa Beng acknowledges that he would have to do more as a Member of Parliament (MP).

The BN must reinvent itself to allow its MPs to criticise the government or the people would be inclined to vote for opposition MPs who are more vocal, Hwa Beng told MalaysiaVotes.com on Feb 16. “The people will say, ‘What’s the use of getting an MP who cannot speak up for the people’s interests?’”

The MCA central working committee member said there should be space for constructive criticism in the BN and Parliament. “If I get elected into Parliament, I want to play a role, if I can. It’s not easy but I want to,” he said. “I also want to be able to accept criticism. If I worry about being criticised, I will work harder. If no one makes noise, I can become lazy.”

Some may see this as a bold promise while others will dismiss it as foolhardy, especially given the BN whip which brooks no dissent from within the coalition.

“I’ve heard him speak out against the PJ and Subang Jaya councils,” Nadeswaran said. “If there is going to be a dissenting vote in Parliament, if there is no whip, I think it will be Hwa Beng.”

Nades the Citizen
Despite all the good things he has to say about the two candidates, Nadeswaran won’t be able to vote for either of them. He is registered to vote in the Klang parliamentary and Kota Alam Shah state constituencies.

“I know I’m going to be accused of all kinds of things but I think the least you can do is to identify decent people who can represent the interests of the people. Otherwise we would have riff-raffs being representatives in Parliament or the state assembly,” he said.

“This is not Citizen Nades the columnist, this is Nadeswaran the citizen, who is endorsing them,” he insisted, despite it being pointed out to him that the public would recognise the endorsement because it was coming from the public persona of Citizen Nades and not any other individual they had barely heard of.

Asked how the endorsement would work, he said, “I tell my friends I’m endorsing them. The candidates can also tell others that.”

Edward said he might invite Nadeswaran to be a guest speaker at his ceramah. Commenting on the endorsement, he quipped, “I must be doing something right.”

Said Hwa Beng: “Citizen Nades has been very outspoken on local authority issues. I have been a councillor for nearly 20 years. The endorsement is an endorsement of my credibility in the local authorities. It encourages me to be more transparent and accountable to my constituency.”

But what if the candidates, after they are elected, fail to live up to expectations? “I will have the privilege and honour to whack them in public!” said Nadeswaran. Those who have followed Citizen Nades’ columns will know he will be true to form.