BN Selangor is unfazed by the turnout at the People’s Uprising Rally yesterday, saying that most of the participants are party workers mobilised from other states.

klang bn ponggal 130112 “We are not worried for a very simple reason: their core group are mainly party workers and I think almost 80 percent were from PAS.

“We have not seen any significant Indian and Chinese support, so it is quite expected. They moved the people from Kelantan, Kedah and everywhere,” said Selangor BN coordinator Mohd Zin Mohamed when met today at a Ponggal function in Klang.

He added that BN has held an even larger event before in Stadium Bukit Jalil on Aug 31 last year, which he claimed drew some 130,000 participants.

klang bn ponggal 130112 Zin also said that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's function in Klang this morning enjoyed "natural support", that is, the participants were not bussed in from elsewhere.

When asked about people in blue 1Malaysia T-shirts seen distributing sacks of rice nearby after the function, Zin said those were merely "Ponggal (harvest festival) goodies, nothing to worry about".

Problems listed

Zin, Najib, and other BN leaders were in Klang's ‘Little India' today for celebrations in conjunction with Ponggal tomorrow, which some 500 people attended.

Dignitaries present included Najib's wife Rosmah Mansor, MIC president G Palanivel, and Selangor BN deputy chief Noh Omar.

klang bn ponggal 130112 In his speech, Najib ( right ) listed several alleged problems with the Pakatan Rakyat-led state government and urged the audience to change it.

"Water problems, shrine problems, rubbish problems, even when I was having breakfast earlier there were people complaining. One said the Klang Municipal Council owes him RM50,000 - even the contractors are complaining!

"This is enough, ladies and gentlemen, problem after problem. As a government, we should not be creating problems. We should be solving them," he said, while asking for the time and the mandate to resolve problems faced by the Indian Malaysian community.

Outdoing the Joneses 

Roughly 90,000 were observed attending the government’s Merdeka celebrations at Bukit Jalil Stadium last year, although Bernama cited the turnout as 150,000.

From the hundreds of buses chartered to ferry people to Bukit Jalil to the free LRT tickets to attendees, the government appeared to have spared no expense in ensuring a full turnout at the event.

Merdeka celebration in bukit jalil 2012 1 These include lavish lucky draw prizes ranging from the latest Proton Preve to rather un-Malaysian products such as a Chevrolet Cruze, a Vespa scooter, 50 Huawei tablet computers, 10 fixie bicycles and three Blackberry smartphones.

Prime Minister Najib Razak declared the event a success, in an attempt to outshine the sea of yellow Bersih supporters who flooded the iconic Dataran Merdeka event the night before.

Meanwhile yesterday, an estimated 100,000 people traversed the streets of KL from late morning and gathered at the iconic Stadium Merdeka for the rally, led by Pakatan Rakyat and various NGOs.

Unlike previous mass gatherings such as Bersih 2.0 and 3.0, the authorities had kept to a hands-off approach and no untoward incident was reported during the entire duration of the day’s events.

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