<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>Volunteer tells why Aware's EGM turned raucous
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I READ Ms Sumiko Tan's article on Tuesday, 'More losers than winners', with dismay. There were some 3,000 people present last Saturday at the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). Emotions were charged, people came to correct what they thought was a grave injustice to the core principles of Aware, they came to stand up for what they believed in, they came to speak up.
If Ms Tan expected 3,000 people in these emotionally strenuous conditions to sit like sheep and make polite conversation, then obviously she had not thought through the gravity or extent of the event.
I was one of the volunteers for the old guard and my duties included keeping peace in the hall. As volunteers, we were prepped for these conditions and we braced ourselves for extreme ugliness. There was none. There was no violence and considering what we had to put up with, I think the crowd was very well-behaved.
In fact, everything was relatively quiet until Ms Josie Lau's team started to switch off the microphones on the floor at the start of the meeting to silence the crowd. When one is trying to speak up in a hall as cavernous as the one in Suntec City with no microphone, one is left with little choice but to shout to be heard. Even the new guard's legal counsel, Mr Gregory Vijayendran, advised that the microphones be left on as this was normal procedure at an EGM.
Ms Lau's team's actions set the tone for the EGM, the crowd did not. This 'unbecoming behaviour', which Ms Tan described as 'disquieting and disgusting', was not 'bitchiness' as she claimed. This was passion, which Ms Lau's supporters did not have, made clear by the fact that most of them left after voting, without even caring about the outcome.
We protested when Mr Siew Kum Hong was told to go and sit with the men at the sidelines. There is nothing in the Constitution that dictates segregation of sexes at an EGM. Furthermore, Mr Siew was acting as legal counsel for the old guard, so he had every right to sit with them.
We protested when Ms Lau started making her president's address; we had not come to listen to her speech. This was not an ordinary meeting, this was a meeting requisitioned for by 160 Aware members to submit our vote of no confidence in Ms Lau's exco. Ms Lau proceeded with her speech eventually and we protested again when she brought up a slide that showed the achievements of Aware in the past 24 years, none of which she or her team was responsible for.
We protested when Ms Lau tried to credit the spike in membership from January to last month to her new exco. The spike in membership had nothing to do with the work of her new exco, they had not done any.
We protested when Ms Sally Ang shouted the now infamous 'shut up and sit down' line into the microphone. We were treated like primary school children from the start and we were not about to allow that to happen.
We protested when Dr Thio Su Mien hijacked the microphone from people who had queued for up to an hour and a half for their chance to speak.
We protested when she started to boast of her credentials and why she deserved the self-named title of 'Feminist Mentor'. This was the woman who had admitted that she was the driving force behind the March 28 takeover of Aware.
We protested when she demanded that we respect our elders; as a member of the meeting so rightly called out, respect has to be earned.
We protested when it was revealed that $90,000 had been spent by Ms Lau's team in the past month, a staggering figure that made many of us gasp in shock.
As a volunteer peacekeeper, I found certain times very trying myself, such as when a male supporter of Ms Lau's team twice referred to the crowd as 'the congregation'. We were not a congregation, but we were certainly expected by Ms Lau's team to behave like one. Pamela Oei (Ms)
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->I READ Ms Sumiko Tan's article on Tuesday, 'More losers than winners', with dismay. There were some 3,000 people present last Saturday at the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). Emotions were charged, people came to correct what they thought was a grave injustice to the core principles of Aware, they came to stand up for what they believed in, they came to speak up.
If Ms Tan expected 3,000 people in these emotionally strenuous conditions to sit like sheep and make polite conversation, then obviously she had not thought through the gravity or extent of the event.
I was one of the volunteers for the old guard and my duties included keeping peace in the hall. As volunteers, we were prepped for these conditions and we braced ourselves for extreme ugliness. There was none. There was no violence and considering what we had to put up with, I think the crowd was very well-behaved.
In fact, everything was relatively quiet until Ms Josie Lau's team started to switch off the microphones on the floor at the start of the meeting to silence the crowd. When one is trying to speak up in a hall as cavernous as the one in Suntec City with no microphone, one is left with little choice but to shout to be heard. Even the new guard's legal counsel, Mr Gregory Vijayendran, advised that the microphones be left on as this was normal procedure at an EGM.
Ms Lau's team's actions set the tone for the EGM, the crowd did not. This 'unbecoming behaviour', which Ms Tan described as 'disquieting and disgusting', was not 'bitchiness' as she claimed. This was passion, which Ms Lau's supporters did not have, made clear by the fact that most of them left after voting, without even caring about the outcome.
We protested when Mr Siew Kum Hong was told to go and sit with the men at the sidelines. There is nothing in the Constitution that dictates segregation of sexes at an EGM. Furthermore, Mr Siew was acting as legal counsel for the old guard, so he had every right to sit with them.
We protested when Ms Lau started making her president's address; we had not come to listen to her speech. This was not an ordinary meeting, this was a meeting requisitioned for by 160 Aware members to submit our vote of no confidence in Ms Lau's exco. Ms Lau proceeded with her speech eventually and we protested again when she brought up a slide that showed the achievements of Aware in the past 24 years, none of which she or her team was responsible for.
We protested when Ms Lau tried to credit the spike in membership from January to last month to her new exco. The spike in membership had nothing to do with the work of her new exco, they had not done any.
We protested when Ms Sally Ang shouted the now infamous 'shut up and sit down' line into the microphone. We were treated like primary school children from the start and we were not about to allow that to happen.
We protested when Dr Thio Su Mien hijacked the microphone from people who had queued for up to an hour and a half for their chance to speak.
We protested when she started to boast of her credentials and why she deserved the self-named title of 'Feminist Mentor'. This was the woman who had admitted that she was the driving force behind the March 28 takeover of Aware.
We protested when she demanded that we respect our elders; as a member of the meeting so rightly called out, respect has to be earned.
We protested when it was revealed that $90,000 had been spent by Ms Lau's team in the past month, a staggering figure that made many of us gasp in shock.
As a volunteer peacekeeper, I found certain times very trying myself, such as when a male supporter of Ms Lau's team twice referred to the crowd as 'the congregation'. We were not a congregation, but we were certainly expected by Ms Lau's team to behave like one. Pamela Oei (Ms)
