London on Saturdays can be quite a nightmare to travel to. You may encounter tourists and football fans. Both travel in packs.
Tourists generally bring screaming children along. Football fans act like screaming children… who are drunk!
Either way, your day out in London would not be as much fun. Fortunately for me, the recent incursion into London was pretty uneventful, no tourists or football fans and I actually found a seat on the tube.
I was on my way to Conway Hall in Holborn. While Londoners were recovering from the rather turgid summer, little did they know that politically interested Malaysians were gathering in that little corner of London.
Maria Chin Abdullah is no longer a stranger to Malaysians all over the world.
She is the leader of the Bersih movement, which successfully showed the government what half a million Malaysians can achieve with simply their love of the nation.
As if that was not enough star quality for the event, we also had the spokesperson for G25, Datuk Noor Faridah Ariffin.
The G25 has had a massive impact on Malaysian political discourse in the past year, becoming the focal point for Malaysian moderates in our fight against the Islamofascist.
Maria and Noor Faridah are fresh from the massive victory of Bersih 4.
In Malaysia, the people’s movement is systematically ignored by the mainstream media and suppressed by the government. However, things are changing.
The Bersih 4 rally was covered by Al-Jazeera which needs no introduction.
Furthermore, it is not uncommon now to read Western news pieces which talk about the corruption in the Malaysian government and its stop-gap solutions by stoking the fires of racial discord and religious fundamentalism.
No less a newspaper that the famous left leaning The Guardian have reported this.
Maria emphasised that the numbers of Bersih 4 were unprecedented and but what was amazing was that these numbers were not due to any kind of financing.
While some political gatherings required contributions (like RM100), Bersih 4 showed that the participants did so out of love. Malaysians even generously donated to the tune of RM2.6 million!
Noor Faridah pointed out that the propaganda to label Bersih 4 as a Chinese-DAP movement came to no fruition at all.
There were almost 50% Malay representation, according to her. These were not just younger generation Malays but even pakcik and makcik as well.
We get the idea that Bersih 4 was like a super massive gotong-royong, only we were aiming to clean up government!
Which brings us to the goals of Bersih 4.
These were stated as follows – free and fair elections; clean government free of corruption; the right to dissent; strengthening the parliamentary democracy; saving the nation’s economy.
These five goals are topped off with another one which must be saluted for its sheer audacity – the resignation of the prime minister himself.
Why was this final goal necessary?
Quite simply because the excesses in misgovernance are so acute that only his removal will begin the painful process of reformation. At the moment, he represents a huge stumbling block.
The scandal of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), which is simply not going away is the biggest proof of misgovernance.
When RM2.6 billion was reported to be in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s personal account, their responses showed the helter-skelter nature of their administration.
First came outright denial. Then a denial of any wrong doing with money sitting in the account. Added to this was the question of the origins of the funds.
At present, the version of the story is some wealthy Middle Eastern donors gave Najib the money as thanks for his work against Isis.
A campaign he began one full year before Isis burst onto the scene of global theatre of politics!
And despite the fact Najib actually praised ISIS when it first appeared, applauding them for their ability to overrun their enemies.
He was at the UN only last week calling for moderation in Islam against extremists like Isis. How does one not perceive the “tunggang langgang”-ness of Najib’s governance!
However, a much darker aspect is the deliberate attempts to subvert the investigations into 1MDB. A few independent auditors have already been dismissed.
Officers have been transferred to the Prime Minister’s Department.
But what is most blatant is probably the Cabinet reshuffle where the deputy minister himself was dropped.
Despite the government denial, the consensus by the rakyat is that it was because Tn Sri Muhyiddin Yassin demanded some answers about 1MDB.
As if subversion isn’t bad enough, there is now a concerted attempt at diversion as well. We have seen the emergence of people like Datuk Jamal Yunos and Ali Tinju.
These men are out to stoke racial fires in order to plunge the nation into another massive racial storm.
Fortunately, as Maria and Noor Faridah pointed out, the spirit of the rakyat has shone forth overcoming this evil.
We are living in dark times. The struggle for a democratic and harmonious Malaysia continues.
But in times like these, heroes like these two women emerge. We must give them our full support to realise our goals. – October 7, 2015.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
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