The Sacking, Hungry Ghosts and the local council.

Klang Valley is back to normality after the festive break.

We are in the midst of festive open houses albeit in a smaller scale. We are also in the midst of the Chinese "hungry ghosts festival" - paying homage to the departed souls of the loved ones. We also celebrate the holy month for the Hindu communities.

This year, all these celebrations are on a much modest scale as we honour the victims of MH17 and remember those missing on MH370.

On returning back from the festive holidays my councillor friends in the Petaling Jaya City Council had a major issue at hand.

They discovered that there was to be made public the city's proposed ammendments to the town plans. The public were to be invited to state their objections to these proposals, if any or to indicate their support and comments.

On its own, this is what is legally required of the council. However, these proposed ammendments were not  informed to the councillors first, thus they raised objections.

The proposals were discussed and at that point there were some issues objected by the councillors. The state authority however decided to proceed with the proposals having noted the councillors objections.

Thus the council were instructed to publicly display these ammendments.

The councillors decision to issue a press  statememt distancing themselves from the proposed ammendments than did not go well with the mayor and the council directors.

I hope that in this confusion we have not lost sight of the fact that the law has to be respected and service to the community remains priority. Also the independence of the third tier of governance must be seen to be so.

Nevertheless, I hope concerned residents will take the opportunity to understand the future city plans and to give their comments as necessary: the city's future is at stake.

A bigger issue that arose after the festive break is about the Mentri Besar of Selangor. He was asked to resign and be replaced by the party president.

He refused to make way and thus ensued a very much public washing of dirty personal and party laundry.

It concluded with very dirty laundry waste water being thrown into the public domain: the MB was sacked from his party.

For me, its not if the MB is guilty or not of the speculated shortcomings. His appointment as the state's chief executive was by the political party thus he should now also abide by the decision of the party ie to resign.

The PR coalition is bound by their commitment to the voters for a clean transparent government. Thus if there is even an ounce of suspicion of some questionable deals, it is the coalition's duty to act.

And act they did: however it did not go well with some of the public simply because of how events came about.

Nevertheless I applaud the party and the coalition for daring to do the right thing even if it means facing the wrath of the voters.

I pray for common sense to prevail, looking at the end, the objectives. Stay focused and together we can still bring on the changes we are striving to bring.

I also pray that we wash off the dirty laundry water from the streets and move on.

Lets conclude Syawal and the special months in both the Chinese and Hindu calendars in a positive step.

Let us prepare to be one in honouring the victims of MH17 as their bodies are brought home, remembering them but not and never forgetting the missing MH370 and all on board.