Universiti Sains Malaysia Campus Election 2012...

...from the eye of unrepentant, depressing, grovelling cynic. An off-tangent piss-take by an irreverent one-man hate machine. Caution: The following content contains strong language and unremittingly self-centered, biased point of view with questionable factual contents and loads of bullocks. You have been warned.

Note: Feel free to let the video below play while reading this post. Beethoven's No. 7 Symphony, Movement II: Alegretto definitely sets the overall tone of this post. In fact, whenever I feel like delivering a cynical rant, I would like to have an orchestra to play this as a background soundtrack. Call this wholesome multisensory reading experience!



After being suspended for one academic year ostensibly due to readjustment of timetable thus giving those who were elected back in 2010 a year to overstay their welcome, Universiti Sains Malaysia will finally have its campus election again for academic year of 2012/2013. Yes, the festival of mediocrity, posturing and power-mongering is back to scourge the campus, ruining tea and your weekend.

To be frank, I only manage to obtain the complete information (though I have heard bits and pieces about it from cyberspace) regarding this campus election when I happened to drop by Kompleks Cahayasiswa just to check out the distribution of Kad 1SiswaMalaysia Discount Card and to confirm whether postgraduates will be given the card or not. (Turns out there's no news about postgraduates despite some announcement made by some MPP guy by the name of Hafiz Kasim says postgraduates will be eligible as well. Heck, even the staff of IPS didn't receive any news about it so far!). And there it was, four pieces of indiscernible A4 papers hastily pasted on the door of the Student One-Stop Centre, stuck forlornly at a corner which one would easily miss by walking slightly faster ending up in the blind spot of your eyesight.

Paste this four pieces of paper on any cluttered notice board available in all Desasiswa and tell me whether you can discern it or not. As if this couldn't be worse enough, one block will only be allocated of one copy of this announcement and the one pasted over Desasiswa's Cafe is usually the one nobody really noticed negating any effort of making announcement altogether. The worst is when they stuck four pieces of paper together in one set (instead of displaying each page separately) and just stuck it on the notice board. That's what happened in my block. Tell me who will flip it.

As I sieved through the loaded jargons and information, I notice something interesting: postgraduate seats in Student Representative Council?

Immediately I found myself in cognitive dissonance: for the first time in USM's history that postgraduate student has finally been enfranchised to vote in campus election and there's no doubt that it's a great progress catching up with a few other Malaysian public universities which has already done so for years BUT how many of us postgraduates actually know about this recent development? Did any of these information regardless of nomination day or polling day actually reached the general postgraduates populace? Will there be anyone who will be competing for the postgraduates seat and if there are, WHO THE HELL ARE THEY? Another thought that popped up immediately: why is this announcement done in Bahasa Malaysia only? Why there isn't a translated version in English for the benefit of international students which form a significant proportion of postgraduates in USM as well as a smaller proportion of undergraduates?

As I read along, I was immediately consumed by irrational fits of anger and derision. Nomination day on 21 September 2012 (Friday), Polling Day 25 September 2012 (Tuesday). Campaign period: 22-24 September 2012 (SATURDAY, SUNDAY and Monday). As if there's no other way for USM Department of Student Affair to trivialize the event even further than it already is with ridiculously short campaign period, the campaign period falls mostly on weekend where most of the campus population are either gone home, gone off campus or stayed in. This is not even the clincher yet. Coincidentally (or is it deliberately?), it happens to be Convocation Week (18-23 September 2012) as well where classes at DKG-W were cancelled to make way for Convocation while everyone is stuffing themselves to the brim with fairground food and too dazed to look at any campaign banners or posters.

Comes nomination day and despite all these handicaps imposed by the USM Department of Student Affair, there are still groups of people who are willing collude in this Potemkin Showcase of an Election. Those same bunch of interest groups and power brokers who parades and postures in order to become the power that be, riddled with delusion of grandeur in achieving greatness without realizing how futile and vain their effort would be, how microscopically minute and insignificant their role would be in campus life. The faces might be different but it is still the same group of aching, self-aggrandizing bastards and bastardettes that you won't even want to shake hands or look at in real life.

...and as soon as Nomination Day is over,  I lost one of my postgraduate vote as someone by the name of Haja Mydin achieved a walkover for the sole campus-wide general constituency allocated for postgraduates because he is the only nominee vying for the seat. By the way, he was a former SRC member two terms ago. What was his duty again? (Kerusi Umum in USM Campus Election parlance). Who the hell is he to think he can represent the postgraduates? Along with Haja Mydin, there are 14 other freeloading twits who achieved walkover as well. Interesting enough however that one Institute of Postgraduate Studies School Constituency (Kerusi Pusat Pengajian) probably the one over branch campuses over KeJut and Kubang Kerian remains vacant as no one vies for it. Told you the information didn't reach every postgraduates. This leaves 29 seats in Student Representative Council to be up for grab including the three seats allocated for IPS Main Campus School Constituency Seat which saw a four corners competition.

Perhaps I was over exaggerating when I says that it's going to be same shit all over again while in actual fact, shits does has it own variety of flavours as well! Even though campus election is non-partisan de jure in which all candidates in the election compete as individuals, a couple of interest groups de facto operate beyond legal margin outside public scrutiny and transparency, aided with questionable, shady source of funding and engages in selective dissemination of information or misinformation serving only their own self-interest and benefit while misleading the uninformed, sheep masses. Then there's this up and comer that pops out of thin air yet still well prepared for the challenge. These lobbyist only exist simply because USM Department of Student Affair (you know, the peeps who's actually runnning the show) turned a blind eye for it while these lobbyist colluded along.

This time, these nitwits can be roughly categorized comes in these three flavours (from left to right): Aspirasi, the ostensibly pro-establishment catch-all and therefore spineless, hapless bootlicker and apple-polisher eager to suck up the administration in the name of "LOVE" and "UNDERSTANDING" and purported to be supported by "anyone." Pro-Mahasiswa, a rag tag team of ostensibly counter-establishment groupies which consists of on one hand a bunch of religious fundamentalist (note: Persatuan Mahasiswa Islam) fun-hater who is eager to become custodian of moral and vice and thinks Gangnam Style will lead to downfall of morality and women baring hair will cause men to jizz uncontrollably and on the other hand, bunch of radical who have no sense of proportion in reaction who loves to sent memorandums and demonstrating. Last but not least, a new challenger appears: Parti Cap Ayam, a choice of name that's so frivolous that either might actually work or be their undoing. Choosing the equivalent of Acme in Malay (Acme is a generic product name widely used in American pop culture and usually has a penchant to be totally erratic and unreliable) together with the tagline "More that what it says on the tin.", they seems to keen to serve as a foil and ostensibly cobbled together from various individuals that was related to the pre-existing interest groups. I am slightly fond of frivolousness and some of them did actually replied my query in earnest but at the end of the day, bastards are bastards. So there you go. Choose. Or not choose at all. 

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As soon as the sun rises for Saturday, the campus is already riddled with hideous sights.

The few adjectives that I can think right off my head at the sight of the officially sanctioned campaign banners and candidate posters with which consist of plain white clothes with black, scribbly painted word: funeral-ish. Or repellent. As for those who came up with a plastic banner: did you declare your expenditure on that? Or you have already prepared well in advance?

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The official banners by USM regarding the campus election is equally naff and unappealing as well, complete with the cliche ballot box which looks almost hand drawn. Those smaller English translation is obviously an afterthought, awkwardly placed behind the original BM version. Say, I do wonder about the other notices as well whether it's done in English or remain exclusive in BM. Come to think of it, NONE of the physical literature/banners that I have seen so far is in English while THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NONE for those four people vying for postgraduates seats.

While physical promotional banners might be unappealing in every way, the promotional war over the cyberspace falls on the other extreme end of naff and unappealing, flooding newsfeed with irrelevance. Prepped up smug portraits of prospective candidates which aptly qualify as punching bag, scribbling board, spittoon or shooting target, juiced up with whatever colours imaginable in the light spectrum and finished up with a peerless and painful attempt in creating a lame pun which incorporate their name that barely rhymes as a sad form of a pick up line. All of these transmogrified into a venomous concoction with unstoppable eyewatering that makes you want to gouge out your eye and uncontrollable cringing that will make you die on the inside. Yet behind these sensory overload lies an incredibly hollow shell, a vacuous void of empty slogans, watered down visions and crushed dreams. Some of it doesn't contain any meaningful information at all to help the electorate forms reasonable judgment before casting their votes. And these peeps say the student will be able to make their own judgment.

I might be merciless and judgmental in my observation and outlook about this Potemkin election that seemingly portrays some semblance of student representation and democracy but in actual fact represents no one for the amusement and welfare of nobody save for those few ambitious, self-righteous lobbyist, a playhouse of mediocrity and backdoor scheming, a sandbox orgy of misinformation and misrepresentation, a mockery of ideals. It's only inevitable that Student Representative Council will dwindle into insignificance, castrated of their role and have no inkling of influence in the life of increasingly apathetic, annoyed, ignorant and/or complacent campus masses.

Now I am just waiting for the self-fulfilling prophecy of the upcoming public rally on Sunday and Monday night degenerating into a filthy cacophony of incessant chanting, booing, name-calling, heckling by gibbering, foaming supporters from all sides while the candidates on stage chanting their vacuous slogan, trading barbs, participating in exchange of limericks and lame pun or attempting to deliver their manifesto in vain...all these happened while the unsuspecting general crowd retreated further away from front stage. All of these came from four years of following attentively campus elections. Please surprise me. Please amuse me.

Meanwhile, where's the other candidates for IPS School Constituency seats? I want to screwscrutinize them.

*Addendum - Initial Observation from Exploratory Biological and Anthropological Field Note*

"As I descended to the sparse, barren concrete wasteland, packs of primitive primates has already congregated for the annual nocturnal social ritual, competing between each other to claim some form of leadership or dominance of the packs. These primates, which oddly shares most physical characteristics with Homo sapien but otherwise experienced stunted growth in brain and intelligence and seemingly remained in an primitive stage of primate evolution, can be easily distinguished into three separate sub-species through their distinct coloration of their fur. The sub-species with most individuals are mostly covered in black fur though there are a small number of individuals from this sub-species experienced mutation which caused them to have auburn fur but otherwise physically they're the same. The second sub-species has orange and yellow fur and some of these individuals seems to have longer digits. The female individuals of this sub-species is definitely the most heavily furred of all sub-species from head to toe. The last sub-species which is the least numerous in number of individuals seems to have calico or turtleshell coloration. There's no certain explanation why this sub-species expressed so much variety in their fur coloration but there's one postulate that this sub-species is the off-shoot of cross-breeding from the two majority sub-species. Continuous observation is definitely warranted."

"While initially I tried observing from close quarters, eventually I took safe refuge right beside the raised concrete podium in order to proceed with my field note."

"In this social ritual, selected individuals from all three sub-species seems to underwent shedding of their original fur and replaced by new set of seasonal fur coat in black and/or white coloration that signifies their position within respective sub-species as the alpha-male/female. Despite their outward similarity, individuals from respective sub-species can still be easily discerned by difference in the sound of their call and exhibition of gestures, parading their plumes while puffing up their chest. As the alpha-individuals assume their best position on the raised podium one after the other, the other individuals of all three sub-species seems to be enthralled in an unrestrained manic trance, shuddering and foaming around their mouth while they let out euphoric, indecipherable hoots and shouts. Quite frequently, the black fur sub-species being the more numerous one exhibits confrontational and aggressive behaviour against the other two less numerous sub-species by constants interrupting and overshadowing the alpha-individuals of their rival species on the podium with hoots, hisses, groans and caterwauls which can aptly be describe as alternating between continuous deafening high pitched wiselling, vibrating stretch lips of balloons being let out of its air and incessant mating calls of excitable pigs in heat. These offensive catcalls (while decidedly stomach churning) are certainly unique to this species of primitive primates."

"The ground is drowned in cacophony of disharmonious noise and sound, eventually degenerated into being totally unable to discern which noise came from who. This social ritual goes on for hours deep into the night with no signs of calming down at any point of time through the whole process. For those few rare moments that the atmosphere seems to settled down a little (usually in between parading of alpha individuals), the ground is back in pandemonium again almost immediately."

"This ridiculous nocturnal spectacles did attract a few more other observers such as me, eager to learn and experience this annual festival of bellowing but just as I what I did eventually through my field note, they assumed a safe distance from a far, repelled by the excess noise. The ritual did comes to it close and as the primitive primate dispersed to their own nesting ground, I too retreated to my abode. It is known from previous observation that such ritual will occur continuously for two days hence one more opportunity for a more thorough observation."

TL;DR: Self fulfilling prophecy indeed. Told you public rally is the most useless place to gained any sensible information that helps in decision making. Probably things will get worse tonight considering more SMS of lies and defaming flown around the campus and all parties denying responsibility. Or the mass SMS spam calling people to vote Aspirasi though 66500. How do they gained access to mass SMS service?

Epilogue: There. I have exhausted all my vocabulary to illustrate my thought. Meanwhile, stay tuned for more updates...if I ever dropped by Padang Kawad just to check out the public rally. As for my own update, I am still reeling from the sudden flood of  emergency commission of work for the past two days. I don't mind money but it's a distraction from my slowly building writing mojo and I still hate vacuous slogan in corporate profile and brochures.