56 - Malaysians Done Making Do

Summary

Everyone should be stunned by how anti-BN forces over the last few years have been able not only to hold their ground, but also to continue spreading a sense of empowerment throughout the country.

My take on how this has been possible is two-fold. Firstly, we are not really talking about Barisan Nasional versus Pakatan Rakyat. Pakatan Rakyat's parties were peripheral players anyway until March 8, 2008.

What happened that day was a revolt by voters – largely urbanites of all ethnic groups – against abuses of power perpetrated by BN leaders, and against their arrogance. Following such a situation, opposition political parties were of course most able to become the expression of this popular anguish.

Over the following five years, we have simply been witnessing this nation-wide process of despair-turning-into-optimism taking forms beyond party politics. Civil society came alive.

Party politics may have been the immediate expression, but the real change – happening more slowly because it is so much deeper – is the movement away from the black-or-white, us-or-them world that Malaysian politics had become over the last 40 years.

This leads me to my second dimension for describing this apparent tectonic shift. Politics in Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s were colourful and chaotic. After that ended in violence – though mainly in Kuala Lumpur – race was used to divide the country; religion to muzzle speech; and politics and journalism became the monopoly of the ruling parties.

Attempts to diversify political power and public discourse did take place every now and then. In fact, this seemed to occur every decade or so— 1988 when Tengku Razaleigh challenged Mahathir; 1998 when Anwar's refusal to leave power quietly gave birth to the Reformasi Movement; and then 2008, when urban Malaysia voted for “anything but BN”.

This subterranean longing for a less complex-filled, less racialist, and a prouder and healthier Malaysia had been finding pendulum expression every decade. Like the rising and falling of the lunar tides.

In short, the forces challenging the federal government come both from the periphery and the bottom. And they are part of a deep struggle that is as much a part of Malaysianness as Nasi Lemak.