Calon DUN N32 Seri Setia

Politics isn’t for the faint of heart. You need an amalgamation of not just charisma and the ability to galvanise the people around you, but a potent mixture of organisational skills, street-smarts, and perhaps a certain amount of intelligence that will hopefully lead to the realisation of one’s vision or perhaps to put one’s ideology into practice. Ideally, you’ll also need to have an altruistic streak about you; the ability to be relatively selfless in a sea of hypocrisy.

Not many of the individuals who are actively involved in politics seem to display these characteristics, and it’s a rare cause for celebration when someone who fits the mould attempts to break through the ranks and pursue his/her ambitions. One such person is Nik Nazmi (better known as Budu to his friends).

The first time I heard about Budu was a few years ago, when a bunch of individuals were criticising him – something about making too much noise at the wrong time and at the wrong place. I never really thought too much about him until a rather close friend of mine ended up marrying him!

It is through her that I got to meet him and eventually have an understanding of his ideology and primary political aims. I won’t launch into a song about his various qualities, but suffice to say that he has as many admirers as critics, and that is primarily a result of his active participation in the attempts to re-do the political landscape in Malaysia.

For those of you who know me, you’ll be quite well aware of the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of the opposition per se (for reasons that I won’t go into at present). But at this stage of the political process back home, I think it is rather important for us to vote for the individual who is standing within a constituency as opposed to voting en masse for a particular party.

Part of Budu’s impressive campaign is to get individuals to blog about him today in order to create additional awareness within cyberspace. So for those who live in Seri Setia, vote for this chap if you want a leader who is untainted and is a man who walks his talks. Or if you have friends there, spread the word. It’s high time for a change. What better place than here, what better time than now? (yes, Rage Against the Machine is playing in the background).