Kuala Terengganu by-election: less than 24 hours to go

With only less than 24 hours to go before voting begins in the Kuala Terengganu by-election, my colleagues and I were in the kopi tiam exchanging opinions on the possible outcomes on Saturday night. We agreed that coverage of the campaigning in the mainstream press was very much to be desired. There doesn't seem to be any brim and fire, only a low-key, tepid reporting which favoured the ruling party whichever way we looked at it.

But I was giving my opinion that we should see a victory for the Pakatan Rakyat. If there is too little news - biased or unbiased - in the mainstream press, there is a lot of coverage in the alternative press like The Malaysian Insider. Certainly too, the politically-biased blogs have been very active in reporting from the ground and exposing the excesses of the politics there. For example, blogs like The People's Parliament and Shanghai Fish are having a field day. And who doesn't know that Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) has been spending days on the ground to help with the campaign?

Of course, the danger of reading and accepting these blogs is that it's possible their news are skewed too. But the views they give are seemingly closer to the people's sentiment in Kuala Terengganu. In any case, the absence of any real reporting in the mainstream media gives me no choice.

So like all other Malaysians with a passing interesting in the political developments in this country, I await the voters' decision on Saturday night.