NEW: KFC Punch-up Saga continues…
_____________________________________________________________
Malaysia Kini
KFC fracas: Conflict resolution, Pakatan-style
KFC fracas: Conflict resolution, Pakatan-style
| Terence Netto 9:44AM Feb 12, 2012 |
COMMENT What looks like the evolving sequel to the fracas at the KFC outlet at iCity, Shah Alam, is providing a foretaste of what the Pakatan Rakyat module of conflict resolution for inner-city disputes would look like should they take power in the upcoming general election.
A video uploaded on YouTube of a fight that broke out after what appears to been a nerve-wracking imbalance between the demand and supply of fried chicken at a KFC outlet had the potential to engender a racially-inflamed postlude.
The 27-second video went viral on the net. With its potential to spawn racially-charged comments, there lay the seedbed for sectarian misunderstanding and conflict.
Fortunately, this prospect was forestalled by the peace-making aplomb of two Pakatan MPs.
Into the threatened breach stepped Lim Lip Eng (Segambut) and Khalid Samad (Shah Alam), bearing mediating initiatives of fact-finding – indispensable, as always, for conflict-resolution – and an offer for a negotiated settlement after their intercessory efforts made things obvious that the dispute had no more inflammatory nub than an imbalance between supply and demand and the consequent frazzled nerves leading to fists thrown in fury.
Lim started the mediation ball rolling by organising a press conference a few days after the incident occurred and a couple after the video had gone viral on the net.
The press conference saw the injured party to the fracas tell his story. To his credit, Daniel Ng did not affect the aura of the much-wronged victim in his narrative of what happened.
After Ng’s version hogged the headlines on the web news portals, the video maker came out with her side of the story.
Her version strengthened the growing hypothesis that a shortage of fried chicken and the nervous anxiety that had occasioned was the cause of the fight at KFC’s iCity outlet in Shah Alam, and not racially-tinged thrash talk that could have accompanied the hubbub.
Thanks to the two Pakatan MPs, the stage has been set for an amicable resolution of the dispute.
Facts on the cause of the dispute have been affirmed, as a consequence of which tempers are calmed and cyber commentary restrained.
The ‘Allah’ imbroglio
This module of conflict pacification and resolution follows the one whose outlines had congealed when the dispute over Christians’ use of the term ‘Allah’ occurred a little over two years ago, following a High Court decision that upheld a Catholic Church publication’s use of the term.
As the dispute flared in the public arena, Pakatan leaders, led by Anwar Ibrahim, went into a huddle and emerged with the finding that Muslims do not have an exclusive right to the term; Jews and Christians could also use the term.
However, this did not prevent assorted politicians hitting the demagogic trail, venting their spleen at the court decision even as incendiary elements torched church buildings and property.
But Pakatan’s principal leaders like Kelantan Menteri Besar Nik Aziz Nik Mat and Anwar steered by the course of submitting facts to a candid public and allowing the latter to decide whether they want to be inflamed by superstition or enlightened and becalmed by fact.
Pakatan MPs Lim and Khalid have emulated this module in their intervention in the KFC outlet dispute, with results that are looking every bit as promising as antecedent overtures in the ‘Allah’ imbroglio did in early 2010.
Of course, this is going to deprive Hasan Ali of grist for his inflammatory mill, though that does not seem the case with Perkasa types, as its secretary-general has already found fault with the comments posted on the web on the KFC dispute.
Character is destiny, as the Greeks say, but the destiny of a post-BN Malaysia need not follow BN or Perkasa outlines.
As suggested by the better angles of the Malaysian spirit, to use a phrase from Abraham Lincoln, that destiny as prompted by MPs Lim and Khalid in their KFC mediation effort is set to flower in a Pakatan ascendancy.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.
—————————————————————————————————–
IT IS INEVITABLE THAT PERKASA, ULTRA-RIGHT MALAY GROUP, SHOULD JUMP IN WITH BOTH FEET, THUS ADDING TO THE PERCEPTION THAT IT WAS A RACIST CONFRONTATION WHEN IT WAS A MATTER OF POORLY TRAINED STAFF, DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER AND GROUP AGGRESSION.
Malaysia Kini
KFC fist fight: Perkasa jumps in the barrel
KFC fist fight: Perkasa jumps in the barrel
| 2:37PM Feb 11, 2012 |
Malay rights group Perkasa will seek a meeting with i-City Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) staff over a Youtube video that showed one of its staff attacking a customer last Monday.
Perkasa secretary-general Syed Hassan Syed Ali (below) said the initiative was in light of the victim already receiving media attention.
“It looks like the party claiming to be attacked by a KFC workers is the only one getting media attention.
“Perkasa feels that they (the KFC staff involved) should be given the chance to explain to the public what really happened.
“Perkasa wll meet with the KFC staff soon to get an explanation,” he said in a statement yesterday.
On Thursday, the victim, Danny Ng, assisted by Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng had called for a press conference over the incident.
According to Ng, he had scolded the KFC staff for its poor service after the outlet ran out of chicken.
Ng’s outburst angered the staff, some of whom tried to attack him.
However, he has declined uttering racial slurs against the staff.
Customer ‘no right to scold’
Public comments over the incident, said Syed Hassan, has been “very unfair” to the KFC staff involved and that Ng should not have scolded the KFC employees.
“Certainly there are better ways to express dissapointment when what we want has finished. Why is there a need to shout angrily in premises that does not belong to him?
“He is only a customer, what rights does he has to scold the KFC workers?” he said.
Sympathising with the workers, Syed Hassan said they have to stand all day long in the kitchen on top of serving their customers.
Yesterday, Malaysiakini visited the premises but its manager declined to comment, insisting that any queries be referred to its headquarters.
The person who uploaded the video onto Youtube gave her eyewitness account of the incident today, while DAP’s Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng has offered to help the two parties make peace.
——————————————————————————————————–
Both videos came from the same person. Read what she says inMalaysia Kini...
KFC video maker explains iCity scuffle
| Nigel Aw 12:08PM Feb 11, 2012 |
The person behind the Youtube account Jess6366, who had uploaded two videos of iCity KFC workers allegedly assaulting a customer, today came forward to give her account of the incident.
Requesting anonymity and not be photographed, she said that she was initially in the same queue as the assault victim Danny Ng when fracas took place.
“It was about 9.30pm; I saw another queue with fewer people, so I changed queue. Mine had about five people in front of me while his (Ng’s) had about 10 people.
“When it reached my turn, it was already 10.45pm while Ng had another person in front of him. When his turn came, there was no more chicken because I was the last one to pack all the chicken,” she said at a press conference in Klang today.
Ng, she said, angry that the manager had failed to inform customers that the chicken had run out, raised his voice at the staff.
However, she said, aside from a staff member calling Ng a “pig” and telling him to make his own fried chicken, no other vulgarities or racial slurs were indulged in by either side.
“The worker called him a pig, but Ng did not use any racial remark, but his voice was high, maybe he shouted at the worker,” she said.
The video maker, accompanied by Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng and Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad came with her daughter’s fluffly red hat which appeared in the video, as evidence that she was there.
Her daughter, she said, had been in another queue “to see which was faster”.
——————————————————————————————————-
——————————————————————————————————-
This is the NEW video…
—————————————————————————————————
Friday, 10 February 2012 10:33
Another video uploaded as KFC punch-up riles Malaysians
Written by Maria Begum, Malaysia Chronicle
Instead of abating, a video of a customer being punched by staff of a KFC outlet in I-City, Selangor, has attracted even greater public outcry. Other customers who were present and filmed the punch-up are starting to send in their footage to Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng.
“This is the second video taken by a customer who was at the I-City KFC fight fiasco,” Lip Eng said on his Twitter.
Churlish and unprofessional
The second video confirms the view of many that the KFC staff had behaved churlishly towards Ng Chee Fei, who had gone to the restaurant with his wife on February 6.
According to Ng, he and his wife were made to wait at the KFC outlet for an hour before being rudely told “‘ayam sudah habis, apa you mahu lagi?
Angered by the sloppy service, he ticked off the staff and a shouting match ensued. According to his wife, some of the staff even brought out a steel bar to threaten them.
Although she managed to pull her husband away, he refused to be brushed off and re-entered the outlet, demanding their names so that he lodge a formal complaint. It was then that one of the staff punched him in the face, while the outlet manager stood by and chatted the others.
‘Racialisng’ what was basically terrible customer service
Some of those present filmed the incident, and one of them uploaded the video on You Tube, where it became viral. Anxious to downplay the violence displayed by the staff, some cyber-troopers who seem to be Umno supporters began tagging the incident as an outbreak of Malay vs Chinese animosity. Ng was also accused of being an ‘arrogant Chinese’.
This led Ng to seek legal advice and lodge a police report over the incident. At the police station, Ng was advised not to approach the Pakatan Rakyat with his story ‘in the spirit of 1Malaysia’.
However, given the deafening silence from KFC, which has yet to offer an apology or words of comfort, Ng decided to approach Lip Eng for justice. KFC is an Umno-linked frim.
“I won’t go back to KFC, not for a long time, I’m mentally distressed,” Ng told a press conference on Thursday.
“This is no reason for physical attack. I did not hit back because violence is not the answer. Rumours that I was drunk when the incident occurred are also not true.”
Spare the rod and spoil the child
All eyes are on whether KFC will refuse to call for an inquiry into the conduct of its staff. All eyes are also on the police to see if they will take any action at all.
There is also some expectation that ultra-Malay rights group Perkasa and its founder Ibrahim Ali may be roped in to speak on behalf of the KFC staff.
Malaysia Chronicle
—————————————————————————
No comments:
Post a Comment