The Opposition and presentation skill

The Sibu by-election is just around the corner and already both the BN and Pakatan are preparing for another gruelling battle ahead. In this instance, allow me to touch on the presentation skill of some of our Opposition speakers. For the Sibu campaign, here are some of the Do's and Don'ts on what to speak on when addressing the Sarawakian crowd:

DON'T

• Speak about Altantuya
• Speak about the Scorpene submarines
• Speak about the MACC
• Speak about the police brutality in Semananjung
• Speak about the corruptive practices by UMNO leaders

[None of these issues will ring a bell in the minds of the Sarawakians. They may have heard about them but have little or no impact on them].

DO'S

• For the Ibans who are mainly Christians, touch on the "Allah", the native land issues and the Bakun project
• For the Chinese, highlight how UMNO outsource its racist policies to PERKASA and the things they said about the Chinese - "BE GRATEFUL", "REPENT", "SQUATTERS", "IMMIGRANTS", "CHINESE FEMALES CAME HERE AS PROSTITUTES".
• Please, please, this is the age of information technology. Optimise the usage of IT facilities possible to get the message across. The application of PowerPoint slides can be a powerful tool. However, the problem with politicians is that they love to talk and talk and talk and before you know it, the audience would have "switched off" after one hour of blah, blah, blah.

It really amazes me that whenever the Opposition had a captive audience for the night, say a dinner gathering, they squandered it away by talking at length about issues that maybe relevant to people in Semenanjung but of little consequences to the citizenries in East Malaysia. I have attended many ceramahs by the Opposition. Although there are dynamic speakers like Anwar and Lim Kit Siang but the audience will not buy your speech if if means nothing to them. It is just like, I like Elvis Presley but it doesn't means I like all the songs he sang. Some of the speakers tend to get long-winded and should know when to stop or they simply droned on their speeches. If I had to plot a graph chart, the voice volume would be nothing but a straight line across. Therefore, I urge the Opposition to really polish up their presentation skill before they lose yet another by-election.