The latest stir surrounding the Turun Anwar rally has little to do with politics — and everything to do with rubbish. Literally.
On 28 July, Housing and Local Government Minister Nga Kor Ming claimed that 20 tonnes of garbage had to be cleared following the anti-Anwar protest held last weekend at Dataran Merdeka.
According to Nga, his figures were provided by the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation, a government agency.
He said while the government had no issue with peaceful assemblies, protesters must not litter.
“I’m only reprimanding litterbugs. I’m not accusing (Pendang) of being one.
“I do not deny the fact that PAS’s Amal unit helped clean the area,” he said, referring to the party’s volunteer corps.
“Yet, 20 tonnes of rubbish were strewn around the capital, in areas such as Sogo and Dataran Merdeka,” Nga however insisted, to indicate the despite the cleaning effort by PAS's Amal unit, a massive amount of rubbish was still left behind.
Now, that might sound like a side note — until you compare it with the official media estimate that only 20,000 people attended the rally.
Let’s do the math, shall we?
📦 Trash Math That Doesn’t Add Up
Assume each attendee littered:
- One empty 500ml plastic bottle (~20g)
- One food wrapper or plastic cup (~20g)
That’s about 40 grams of rubbish per person.
To reach 20,000 kilograms (20 tonnes) of trash, you’d need:
20,000kg ÷ 0.04kg/person = 500,000 people
Yes, half a million people.
Now this is not even counting the amount of rubbish that PAS's Amal unit had cleared. Now if PAS's Amal unit had cleared, say half of that amount of rubbish, that is another 250, 000 people to add to the list of the crowd on Saturday's rally.
If you also add to the fact that there are people who likely did not leave any litter - and let's say that the people who didn't litter at all amounted to 250,000 people also, then the size of the crowd in last Saturday's rally will become a whopping 1 million people.
So either a) the crowd was massively larger than reported, or b) each person was throwing away 25 bottles and wrappers each, which is... let’s be honest, absurd.
🧍♂️ I Was There — Here's What I Saw
Anyway, I don't believe that the size of the crowd on Saturday's rally was 500,000 or million, as the rubbish statistics is indicating.
I don't believe it, because I attended the rally myself. I stood by the road leading to the stage at Dataran Merdeka from 2:06 PM to 2:30 PM, and I counted roughly 250 people passing per minute. That adds up to 10,000 people in just 24 minutes.
The flow only stopped at around 2:50 PM, once the area ahead was full. When I looked behind, I saw a sea of people — at least 3 to 4 times the number who had already passed me.
That’s 40,000 to 50,000, just on my side.
I estimated another 25,000 entered from a different direction. Plus, there were people already present when I arrived — and some likely arrived later or were seated out of view.
So my conservative, on-the-ground estimate? 100,000 people.
📰 So Why Did the Media Say 20,000?
This is what truly boggles my mind. How come I am estimating around 100,000 people while the media is saying that only a fifth of my estimate was the crowd size.
To the best of my opinion, iI think the media arrived at their figure simply by taking the official figure given to them by authorities — or maybe they relied on media consensus rather than actual observation or data collection.
With a few helpers and a drone, anyone could estimate the crowd within a 5% margin of error, but I have doubts as to whether the media chose to do that .
And now, Minister Nga’s 20-tonne trash figure ironically undermines the official crowd estimate. That’s why the opposition is rightly pouncing on it — because it doesn’t pass the smell test.
🎭 The Bigger Issue: Media vs. Reality
This isn't just about trash or crowd sizes. It’s a reflection of a disconnect between media narratives and ground realities.
The media, like a roadside biryani seller claiming a “royal Hyderabadi recipe,” will always have a story to sell. It may sound official, but that doesn’t necessarily make it true.
So take what you read with a pinch of salt — or better yet, go see for yourself.
In this increasingly untrustworthy world that we live in, the only person that we can count on is probably our own self.
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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