Inviting the anti-"Anti-ISA" gangsters

I was heading down to the city centre yesterday afternoon to look at George Town's latest tourist attraction. I had heard quite a lot about it earlier in the day and was filled with enough excitement that I wanted to take a look at it as quickly as possible.

So at about 6pm yesterday, I passed by the State Assembly building in Light Street and looked across the road at the Fort Cornwallis carpark. There it was...."Tak Nak ISA", a billboard from the Penang state government.


Perfectly laudable move but my only concern is that it is not going to make any difference with the people sitting pretty on their bums in Putrajaya. Moreover, this billboard positively invites the anti-"Anti ISA" crowd in the state to make some noise and deface it.

I mean, it's so filmsy and modestly small that I wonder why it's put up in the first place. It's simply not bold enough to make a big statement. Small impact, yes, but it's hardly noticeable. And...it's too low for comfort. I wouldn't be surprised if some crooks and bully boys get to work on it in the middle of the night.

An afterthought: I was about to put the finishing touches to this post when suddenly, I thought how coincidental it was that the billboard was put up here just as the Bagan Pinang by-election was approaching its climax. Today, the people in this state constituency in Negeri Sembilan goes to the polls to elect their next representative. Coincidentally, the Barisan Nasional candidate is a certain Mohd Isa Abdul Samad, former Menteri Besar of the state, who had been found guilty of vote buying by his party in 2005 and was punished with a six-year suspension that was later cut in half. "Kesian, nya," I can almost hear them say, but I'm choking on their type of sentimentality. Will the voters of Bagan Pinang say "no" to Isa, just like the Penang state government says "no" to ISA?