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By Mihar Dias (C) Copyright December 2022
The green wave prompted Lim Kit Siang to ring alarm bells on the after-effects of Padang Serai election which he said may threaten Penang.
He asked: What if PAS could sway voters in the mainland Penang bordering Kedah in GE16? Wouldn't that be a threat to PH's position in Penang and elsewhere?
Ordinary folks on Penang Island too were similarly worried before and after the Padang Serai election on the possible outcome and how it would affect them on the island.
A video of men on motorbikes waving PN and PAS flags around Padang Serai on the election eve appeared quite menacing to those who watched it.
This was an election campaign mounted by PN as a show of force but it hardly threatened anyone physically.
There was nothing sinister as some had claimed. Yet those who are against the green wave were already rattled.
Some say we ought to be wary of the green wave because it might be the dawn of the coming of the Talibans.
How in the world did the Taliban get dragged into Malaysia's political campaign? Only God knows.
But for many of my old friends in Penang, the perceived threat of the coming of the green wave seems real. Let me reassure you the green wave is not a threat.
It is no different from the sea of rad shirts we saw in Tambun on the last night of campaigning during GE15, when Anwar addressed PH supporters in a ceramah.
However, to those against PH and are wearing a different colour, it was merely a political ploy and a show of support for Anwar. Nobody thought it was a threat to lives and limbs.
PH fought hard using every means available to win the recent election, including ferrying supporters back from neighbouring countries and endless campaigns on social media.
In fact there was a group of red shirts on motorbikes in Padang Serai who showed up to support the PH candidate. Its number was less than those who joined the green wave of course.
On the other hand, the sea of red hardly scared the kampung folks or the young men of Padang Serai who simply showed up on their "kap chai" bikes carrying oversized flags - and that worried Lim Kit Siang, the CM of the state and my old neighbours in Tanjung Bungah to no end.
And we rationalised that PAS and PN have managed to cloak everything in religious ideology to motivate supporters and make them ride the green wave like surfers on the ocean.
In actual fact, we do likewise with our own red shirts too. We cloak our arguments with concepts of equality, democracy and reformasi.
Yet in real life the ink on our fingers hardly disappeared when we broke our promises fooling our very own supporters.
We swore we'll never work with the corrupted from the blue fraternity of kleptocrats. Yet they are already become our leaders.
Do not be scared, my friends. It's just another case of wrapping everything in ideologies to motivate the masses to bring one to power.
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