Instantly recognisable, Aunty Bersih plied with ‘wefie’ requests at rally

Annie Ooi, also known as Aunty Bersih, was still on Lebuh Ampang at 10pm, trying to divert the tired crowd to St John's Cathedral to have a bath and rest. Walking in between passing traffic and crowds of people, she approached smaller groups along the roads leading to Dataran Merdeka and said to them: "Please go to the church, have a bath and you can put up there for the night." When asked how her day had been, the 69-year old however did not look pleased. For starters, Ooi said she only set out from her home in Setapak after 2pm, which was “later than usual” for her. "I cooked a little and then got engrossed in cleaning and doing the laundry, I'm very particular about coming back to a clean and tidy home," she told The Malaysian Insider when met outside the church. When she started her walk from Maju Junction about 3pm, Ooi then encountered many requests for photos and was held back several times to take “wefies”. “I had to reject many of them as it was slowing me down. “I just wanted to get closer to Dataran Merdeka but it took me three hours just to get to Bukit Nanas,” she said, adding, however, that she was glad to have reached St John's in time for the sunset mass at 6.30pm. But there was one wefie request she was glad she did not refuse, from a young 20-something woman. After they had their picture taken, the young Chinese woman got so emotional that she broke down, Ooi said. "I was shocked and hugged her and ended up crying myself. "I left her after she seemed alright but now I wished I had asked someone to look after her," she added. The retired teacher also admitted that she did not encounter today the type of crowds she experienced during Bersih 3. The devout Catholic also revealed that she planned to sleep on the steps of the church's tiled entrance but was not ready to head back there yet from Lebuh Ampang, where she was still trying to usher people to St John's. "Hello, you must be tired, walk up those steps and go to the church, you can have a bath and sleep over," she told a young couple as she disappeared into the traffic across the road. And, there on the other side, there were people calling out “Aunty, Aunty” to the grandmother, requesting to have their photographs taken with Aunty Bersih. – August 29, 2015.