Machap By-Election Blog Launched

DAP Secretary General, Lim Guan Eng, myself and Liew Chin-Tong
launching Machap By-Elections Blog

Well the multi-lingual Machap By-Election blog has been active for more than a week now, but it's officially launched this morning in Machap Umboo.

And to answer questions from readers at my other education blog, as well as here, yes, I'm actively helping out in the party's campaign in Machap. ;) Did my very first political rally style speech last night in Mandarin as well - it was good to get it out of the way ;) Will try to get some more pictures up for the readers ;)

Back to the blog, it's set up by a DAPSY (well, DAP Socialist Youth, if you are not familiar) team to meet the following objectives...

1. Despite the rural settings of the Machap constituency, Internet literacy cannot be underestimated. We have visited many households with Streamyx access, particularly if they have children or young adults in the house. Hence with an element of media censorship as well as the pure lack of space in the print media, the voters will get full access to our events, statements and pictures (more coming up!) on the website. In a small constituency like Machap, with less than 10,000 voters (and when we won less than 1,300 the last time round), every vote counts!
   
   
2. It must not be forgotten that there are many voters who are currently working outside of the constituency, as near as Melaka city itself or as far as Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Singapore. It is estimated that nearly 25% of the voters are not living within the city. Hence our access to this block of voters who are likely to be Internet savvy, will be through the Internet.
   
   
3. And finally, this by-election is a fight at two levels. Firstly, it's a fight for votes in Machap itself. But equally important, due to the national attention being paid on the by-elections, it is an excellent opportunity for the Party to express its views to all Malaysians throughout the country. A blog is certainly an excellent way for our views to be propagated.

Deputy Secretary General Ahmad Ton, Candidate Liou Chen Kuang,
Lim Guan Eng, myself and Liew Chin-Tong launching
the special multi-lingual editions of the DAP Rockets.

In addition to the blog, the DAP machinery also launched probably it's most professional election 4-page newsletter campaign to date in 3 key languages - Bahasa Malaysia (Utusan Roket), Chinese (火箭快讯) and Tamil Rocket. Will it make a difference in rural Machap? We'll see.

Enjoy! for the next couple of days, we will continue to "upgrade" the contents of the blog to make things even more interesting for readers. Remember to advertise and promote the blog to all Malaysians, in particular, those voting in Melaka. ;)