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The Aftermath
10:53 AM
The Aftermath

This is a landmark occurence in Malaysian politics, whereby BN loses 4 other states, Selangor, Penang, Kedah, Perak to the opposition who retained Kelantan! Even with all the gerrymandering and EC last minute cancellation of indelible ink and hurled allegations of phantom voters, Malaysians have still managed to show BN that the people can't be trifled with and they as the government can't expect to get away with the same-old same-old talk without results.

Just a week ago, I was reading an article about Malaysian politics and there were issues like corruption among ruling governments and their irresponsible attitudes in dealing with it, control of mass media, political prisoners, lack of transparency and accountability in elections, violent breaking up of peaceful protests, nepotism, cronyism, racial and religion issues and so forth. And as I was reading, I was biasely thinking, "Hmm yeap, political prisoners thats Vietnam, corruption and racial issues there's Indonesia, protests and religion issues there's Thailand when I realised that this was an article about Malaysian politics!" To an extent, I thought it was an exaggeration till I started thinking about previous events that had occured.

Corruption is fairly widespread in certain areas, take the bribing of policemen which seem to be a normal occurence here, and the recent issue of the videotape concerning our judiciary which are supposed to be impartial, and the way a committee was set up not to investigate the issue at hand and to discover if its true or not, but to verify the authencity of the tape. Even Vietnam who isn't as 'democratic' as we are fired its ministers for corruption!

All the tv channels and main newspapers are owned by the government, The Star, Sin Chew, New Straits Times, Malay Mail, NTV7, 8TV, TV3, and needless to say RTM 1 and RTM 2. And I admit that I used to believe the way The Star made BN sound so good and they are all about serving the people's needs cause they have the racial equation pat down and the opposition like DAP which was pro-Chinese couldn't get that many Chinese voters so they couldn't be that good and as for PAS, well who on earth wants a government that is so pro-Islam and old-fashioned? Sigh.

As for political prisoners, well we don't execute ours, but haven't you noticed that people who are a political thorn in the side of the ruling government seem to disappear into the lockup for goodness knows what reasons for goodness knows how long? The EC doesn't seem to be as impartial as its supposed to be, and as for their efficiency, just look at the issue of the indelible ink. There's Hindraf for the peaceful protests, and I saw some videos on YouTube and felt that the police handled it rather brutally.

Nepotism and cronyism are familiar to most Malaysians, Sarawak's Chief Minister hands out constructions contracts to his son's firm without open tenders. Racial issues, how about a certain politician that makes speeches about bathing the keris in a certain race's blood? Or about land discounts for the special race or quotas for scholarships and how a certain percentage of a corporation's employees must be from a particular race? Meritocracy over skincolouracy would really be a nice change.

I was really horrified and dismayed by that article, but I do feel more hopeful that things will change for better cause the election results make me realise that we Malaysians are not as stuck in a state of apathy as the government wants us to be. And I'm less sceptical about the power of the people now. I'm really glad that the opposition is now in a stronger position to put more pressure on the majority coalition to get things done and I do hope that the opposition won't be all talk either.

I can't wait till I can vote for my country!

p/s : This was supposed to be a short one to commemorate the significance of the election results but turned into a long ramble instead. Next up, who do you think will be moving into the White House?

Written on Sunday, March 09, 2008; 10:53 AM


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Siew Yen
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