Over the weekend, some 20,000 'flowers' appeared at Lucky Garden roundabout, only to be taken down by DBKL officers. Angry residents stood by and resisted the act.
A project initiated by Malaysian architect Ng Sek San saw 20,000 "flowers" planted at Lucky Garden roundabout in Bangsar by a group of citizen volunteers with PKR Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah on Sunday morning.
That same evening at about 5.30pm, DBKL officers were seen at the scene, removing the colourful flag "flowers", and hording them into a van. But 30 nearby residents converged at the roundabout to stop the officers from doing so, questioning who gave the orders and why the flags could not be planted. One resident even shouted, "Where is the democracy that was promised by 1Malaysia!"
The officers relented and allowed the residents to remove the flags from their van and continued to replant the "flowers" back on the ground.
In a
Whatsapp interview, we asked Sek San the purpose of Malaysian Spring, to
which he shared, "to spread the message of hope and change, and to get
people to participate in the process of making a better Malaysia,
through the simple gesture of planting a flower in the street.. Now we
want Malaysians to snowball this effort by making their own flowers."
His reaction to Bangsar residents who resisted the officers' actions
surprised him and he was touched by their actions: "I'm very proud of my
community here, I nearly cried on Sunday! Our message to others is that
colour (of the skin) is not important to new Malaysia, so they can use
whatever colours and material. It is the defiant act of planting a
flower to welcome Spring which is more important."
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