Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang thinks that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's cavalier response to Bersih's gathering on Saturday was most disappointing, although not unexpected.

Referring to Abdullah's statement that the gathering and petition were tantamount to dragging the institution of the monarchy and the king into politics, Lim said that it was "a baseless allegation completely unworthy of the prime minister as nothing could be further from the truth."

Newspapers today carried Abdullah's statement that the gathering was an attempt to drag the royalty into opposition politics. This was a departure from yesterday when news of the rally was almost completely blacked out.

"Abdullah's response has become the acid test whether it marks the burial of his four-year pledge to hear the truth," Lim told a press conference in the Parliament lobby today.

"The king symbolises the fountain of justice in Malaysia and it is completely within constitutional norms for Malaysians who are shut out from all avenues of redress to seek justice to appeal to the king for intervention," said Lim.

"And it will be beholden on the prime minister and his cabinet to give such appeal serious consideration and not to dismiss them in a most arrogant, cavalier and undemocratic manner," he added.

Denial syndrome

Lim also said that the cabinet meeting on Wednesday should give top priority to the Bersih petition to the king on electoral reforms and take the initiative to establish a mechanism to ensure that the next general election can be truly clean, free and fair.

He added that it was most regrettable that the Barisan Nasional government was suffering from a very serious case of denial syndrome, as evidenced by its refusal to concede that Saturday's gathering was the biggest in the four-year premiership of Abdullah.

"It is pathetic to see the official figure for the gathering grudgingly increase from 4,000, according to the IGP on Saturday, to 10,000 according to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak yesterday, when from all eyewitness, photographic and video accounts, the gathering could be numbered without exaggeration as between 40,000 to 50,000."

The weekend gathering, which took place despite a government ban, saw some 40,000 people marching Saturday from the city centre to the royal palace to hand over a memorandum calling for clean and fair elections.

Lim urged Abdullah, as a responsible prime minister, to acknowledge the legitimacy of the grievances of the gathering.

"Also, acknowledge the exemplary conduct of the 40,000 people who conducted themselves in a peaceful manner despite unnecessary provocations and excessive force by the police and give serious consideration to the calls for electoral reforms."

Blame the police

DAP MP for Seputeh and Bersih spokesperson Teresa Kok who was also present that the press conference expressed her disappointment over the media reports which blamed Bersih for the traffic jam in the city on Saturday.

"If you look at the papers, Bersih was blamed for the traffic jam. But it was caused by the police roadblocks which has started two days before the gathering took place," said Kok.

"It is also not very smart of them to close down Dataran Merdeka. When people cannot walk towards Dataran Merdeka, they walked straight to the palace," she said, adding that the police has to be blamed for the traffic jam and the way the gathering was mishandled.

"It was widely shown on the international media and it painted a negative image of our country, especially with the Asean Summit pending," she said.

"The situation in Burma will be discussed again and it is shameful that the situation in our country is almost similar. It is just like the pot calling the kettle black."

SPECIAL REPORT: Bersih mass protest