Up to date (or time) Election Results

On March 8, after the voting has closed, I am sure everybody was eagerly awaiting the results. I know I was. The newspapers claimed that the earliest result would come out by 7pm.
So I had an early dinner and sat down at 7pm in front of the TV awaiting the results to appear. Astro was covering it on channel 501 and 301. NTV7, TV1 & TV3 was not left out.

By 7.30, it was still showing the 8 walkover seats by BN. By 8pm, they announced 2 more seats won. At 9pm, there was no major announcement. It was boring and surprisingly slow. I was more interested in the PJ seats as I am staying in the area.

Then they announced that DAP had won the Kuching seat at around 9.30pm. Why had the Kuching seat with so many voters been announced so quickly while the other seats with less are still pending?

So I decided to go online to check the results. I could not find a website that was dedicated to announcing the latest updated results! I checked SPR's website, which had a link to the 'latest results', but it was empty. I checked the Star online. Nothing. I checked bernama. Nothing. There was no dedicated website by our government to deliver our most important event to the public. What the heck!

I got fed up and wanted to go to bed early. Then at 10.30pm, my uncle SMS-ed us saying friends from Penang called him to tell him that Penang was won by the opposition. He also mentioned that Samy Vellu had lost. I said, "cannot be lar." The more incredible news was that Koh Tsu Koon had lost. "No way!"

Straight away I ran downstairs and surfed the channels again. Nothing! Nothing at all. I called my friend. He said he got the same news and asked me to check online. I told him there was no website. He asked me to check Malaysiakini.

Malaysiakini website

There were a string of results there. It was updated every few minutes. Not one of these results were shown on TV. True enough the results were correct and not made up. I searched other websites again for more updated results. A few websites following the election directed me back to Malaysiakini. It got so jammed up that they had to create up to 5 mirror websites for people to access.

Malaysia's General Election results was covered by one independent news website. No government website or agency was assigned to report the results to the public. Even the TV were slow in its updates. Unbelievable. Of course, some commented that the TV stations were told not to report the news as they fear trouble from supporters who could not accept the decision that the opposition was winning.

Even so, as the results started pouring in online that BN was losing seat after seat and that Penang, Kelantan & Kedah were in the hands of the opposition parties, the TV stations still had not updated the results.

At 11.30pm, Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon conceded defeat at a press conference and promised that a smooth transition of power. The chart on TV still showed DAP 4 seats. PAS had retained Kelantan earlier at around 10pm. The chart on TV showed PAS 4 state seats.

Come on, who are we trying to cheat. This side we have an announcement conceding defeat. On the other side the chart shows no updates yet.

The trend continue until late into the night. At 3am, the updates online showed that Selangor and Perak were in the opposition parties' hands. Yet the chart showed no results. All they were updating was BN winning parliament seats where else the opposition was still lagging behind.

Finally at around after 3am, someone from SPR announce that 5 state seats was won by the opposition parties. BN was denied 2/3 majority in the parliament. However, the chart remained. And even at 3.30 am when I went to bed, the results of PJ was not announced.

Was it to protect us from parties that may stir trouble? Or was a case of insufficient transparency? Or was it a move to show that BN is still strong and winning big? You decide.