“ Lend me your ears...”
As trite a saying as that may be, Penangites are taking advantage of Speakers’ Square at Esplanade, which was officially launched by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng on May 4, 2010. The Square, the first of its kind in Malaysia outside university campuses, is a platform for Penangites to publicly air their grievances or ideas.
André Loh, a member of the Speakers’ Square founding committee, warmed up the crowd on June 6, playing Sir Cliff Richard’s Sing a Song of Freedom and a legally-dubious adaptation of John Denver’s Country Road (“Almost heaven, West Malaysia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Balik Pulau River...”). After an awkward silence as the gathering crowd stared at the ground and shuffled their feet (“Tak boleh cakap (I cannot speak English),” one onlooker said), someone finally stepped forward to be the first speaker of the day. An elderly Chinese man gave his thoughts on sports betting – “No religion encourages gambling,” he said, and encouraged, to the crowd’s applause, the Pakatan Rakyat state governments to stand firm on their ban on sports betting.
