Police disrupts Anwar's ceramah again....

Police disrupted PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim's public ceramah for the third time in a row, at the party's largest ceramah in Betong, Sarawak tonight, the stronghold of Sarawak deputy chief minister Alfred Jabu.

The dinner cum ceramah held at a open-air food court in Betong, a small town located 70km north of Sri Aman, started smoothly with local PKR leaders, including four candidates, giving their speeches for over an hour without any interruption.

Anwar took to the stage immediately upon arrival at 9.30pm, welcomed by a nearly 1,000 multi-racial local crowd chanting "Reformasi".

However when the PKR de facto leader started to warm up the crowd after 10 minutes, a uniformed police personnel approached the opposition leader and requested him to stop the speech, raising tensions within the crowd. After a brief negotiation, Anwar agreed to shorten his speech.

He then managed to continue his fiery speech for another 20 minutes before the policeman interrupted again.

'No ceramah before campaign period'

Malaysiakini learnt from the organiser that the police had given PKR a permit to hold an 'ordinary meeting' but not a political ceramah on the grounds that campaigning period has yet to commence.

Before ending his speech, Anwar claimed that the police would not take any action if the ceramah fails to attract large crowd.

"If there are only 10 people, the police would not disturb. But when there are many people like tonight, they will disturb," he said.

According to Sarawak PKR deputy Wanita chief Cecilia Siti Una, tonight's crowd was the biggest in the history of Betong.

"It is not easy to ask people in Betong to attend a political ceramah," she told Malaysiakini.

Anwar has been restrained from giving public speeches since he landed on the Land of the Hornbills six days ago. Since then, two of his ceramahs in Kuching city and Satok have been disrupted by the police.

Betong town falls under the Layar constituency, an almost 100 percent Iban rural seat that Alfred Jabu has held for seven terms. PKR has chosen Stanny Embat, a retired senior police officer, to wrest the PBB stronghold from Jabu's grip.

source:malaysiakini

'Polis ganggu lagi ceramah Anwar'

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