Bersih organisers stand their ground, say rally will go on

Bersih 2.0 chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah speaks during a press conference after a meeting with officials from the Kuala Lumpur City Hall at its headquarters today. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Seth Akmal, August 18, 2015.Bersih 2.0 is adamant that the Bersih 4 rally will go an as planned on August 29 and 30, despite Kuala Lumpur City Hall advising them to postpone the gathering for a week.

Its chairperson, Maria Chin Abdullah, said City Hall suggested that they hold the rally after Merdeka Day and even suggested three other possible venues – Titiwangsa, Merdeka Stadium and the National Stadium.

"That is not possible because we have already announced the date and we don't see why we need to change it.

"We will not interfere with the Merdeka preparation as (the rally) will be within the vicinity of Dataran Merdeka. We will not change the date and we will disperse before midnight (of August 31)," she told reporters after a meeting with City Hall officials this morning. 

"What we want to emphasise is that before we even fixed the dates on August 29 and 30, we actually called up City Hall and they said there was no activity (to be held in Dataran Merdeka). But now they have decided to have activities," she said.

On City Hall’s instruction not to set up tents, Maria said they would advise rally participants on the matter but could not do much if they brought sleeping bags.

"We can tell people not to set up tents but we can't tell people to not bring their sleeping bags, because that is the minimum they can bring," she said.

Maria said the mayor assured that City Hall and the police would help control the traffic and crowd while Bersih would instruct rally-goers to keep the area clean.

She said City Hall wanted them to take full responsibility of the rally but they refused to do so as the rally was a shared responsibility with authorities. – August 18, 2015.