..As a Muslim democrat who believes in women’s rights and human rights, the turning point for me was the Umno general assembly of 2006. I wrote then of the barefaced racial and religious supremacist oratory at the general assembly that scared and alienated many Malaysians.
The reaction was immediate. I met people who were already planning to spoil their ballot papers or vote for the Opposition.
For many moderate Malaysians, that was the point when Umno crossed the line. A party that prided itself as the bedrock of centrist politics, that from its birth held an inherent belief in the politics of accommodation necessary for this divided multi-ethnic multi-religious society to survive, had presented an extremist face to Malaysians.
That fateful assembly was of course the culmination of over a year of demonising of moderate voices in Islam, of the Government ignoring the demands for respect for the rule of law and fundamental liberties guaranteed under the Federal Constitution, of the failure of the political, administrative and judicial authorities to uphold the law and deal with compassion and fairness the heart-wrenching cases of conversion and religious rights and freedom that saw families torn apart and ethnic minorities feeling assaulted by a seemingly hegemonic majority.
At the local level, my pro-establishment neighbourhood saw its green lungs disembowelled for a mini-Manhattan of skyscrapers, a hotel and shopping complex in the heart of Pusat Bandar Damansara (PBD).
A strip of green hill along Jalan Beringin, which was preserved as a green lung in the original development plan because of its steep gradient, was stripped bare to build multi-million dollar bungalows.
All protests by the community fell on deaf ears as the combined might of City Hall and greedy developers railroaded neighbourhood associations. A meeting at City Hall between the residents association and the developers was deliberately scheduled for the day after Christmas, without prior notice to the residents association.
Thus our voice went unheard, approvals were finalised, and the tree cutting and earthworks began almost immediately.
At a May protest rally against the intensive development in PBD, the Tan Sris, Datuks, and professionals of Damansara, many of whom were Umno, MCA and Gerakan members, were already talking of boycotting the elections or spoiling their ballot papers; many then could still not bring themselves to vote for the Opposition.
But the warning was clear. “Don’t turn us into your enemy,” one Umno member boomed at the rally.
The belief that the mighty BN could never fall because it controlled all levers of power, and the Opposition could never win because it was an unviable alternative, has bred an arrogance of power among many in Government that bordered on contempt for dissenting sentiment.
Many BN political leaders responded to protests and criticisms by taunting the electorate to vote them out if we did not like their policies; they contemptuously dismissed human rights and women’s rights activists by telling us that our voice and our issues did not matter to their constituents in the kampung. When it suited them they saw themselves only as jaguh kampung, conveniently ignoring the national agenda and the national mission.
Even as late as the campaign period, one Chief Minister dismissed the Hindraf rally and the issues raised as irrelevant to his constituency. They even dismissed the new media as irrelevant because their kampung folk don’t own computers and don’t read the Internet.
They were even blissfully ignorant of the power of the SMS as a medium of political persuasion. They had nothing to worry about, they thought, as they controlled radio, television and the mainstream newspapers. Little did they know that the electorate had switched off. Far more accurate results were coming through their SMS than anything any of the television stations could offer that March 8.
They thought they were the Masters of the Universe and therefore they had nothing to learn from anyone. How so out of touch they were.
While Opposition party politicians were busy making new friends and allies, learning about human rights, women’s rights, Islam and democracy, framing their message to capture public angst, updating their blogs, websites, facebook accounts, getting their message out, raising funds and mobilising the crowds through the Internet and SMS, many of the BN politicians remained smug in their imagined invincibility of incumbent power and money, and the roar of their SUVs.
How the tables have turned. Once Umno could put up a banana stump and it could win an election. Now the Opposition can put up a motley of bloggers, activists, petty traders and amateur videographers to stand for a seat and they can win.
Malaysians finally wanted their vote to make a difference.When leaders fail to lead, the rakyat will show them the way. The decline of a dominant party and the new era of more competitive multi-party politics bring much uncertainty, but with it the potential for the strengthening of Malaysian democracy.
If the Opposition does not get its act together, the protest vote of 2008 could remain just that, a protest. But should the Opposition show the political will to submerge its discordant ideologies and ambitions and merge into a genuine multi-ethnic democratic alternative and prove that it can govern well, and the BN has the courage and imagination to reinvent itself, then Malaysian democracy could possibly return to the original trajectory planned by its visionary founding fathers – that of a democratic, modern, pluralist, secular state that celebrates the strength of its diversity through a national life and politics that promotes co-existence and accommodation and eschews a winner-takes-all mentality.
That is the most optimistic outcome.
The jury is very much out on whether our political leaders, be they in the BN or the victorious Opposition alliance, have it in them to see clearly the path the rakyat have already taken.
After being mauled in the recent general elections, Malaysian Indian Congress Chief Samy Vellu on Sunday urged the Abdullah Badawi government to release the five ethnic Indian activists detained under the country’s draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) since December last.
