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Langkawi Nature Blogs
Politics killed the Langkawi Festivals
Mark: 18 March 2010
After posting the ‘Sad Story of the Langkawi Events 2010” – we found out a bit more:
Our local LTAC (Langkawi Tourism Action Council) which was in the LADA Building (LADA = Langkawi Development Authority) has been dissolved and all responsibility was given to ‘Kedah Tourism’. Nobody there speaks really good English - the whole tourism dept can barely speak English.
The people who set up the tourism offices here (like the new one at the Jetty next to KFC) are from the Federal Government, not Kedah.
(The Federal Government is Barisan National and Kedah Government is PAS, who won a lot of seats last election.)
Previously there was a special 'Kedah Tourism Office' that ran events like the Jazz Festival we almost had. Then when BN lost they shut that down and we lost our Jazz Festival and a whole bunch of events. Now we don't have anything except the Waterfestival.
(Previous years they had some big name Malay bands but this year there will probably be nothing but culture shows.)
Politics seems to play a big role in all of this – and we can only hope, both sides will soon come to the understanding that it needs professional, English speaking people in Langkawi, with adequate funding to care for the Langkawi Tourism on all levels.
