What’s Happening To Our Country?
Mar 16th, 2008 by Steven
It’s now a week since Malaysians went to the poll on 8 March. The dust remains unsettled. We have a couple of states where the appointment of the Mentri Besar (Chief Minister) is still outstanding. The street protest in Penang. The calls within the ranks of UMNO and MCA for their presidents to step down.
Uncertainty looms in the air as the rakyat (people) await for the turn of events to unfold.
Now See What Happens When You Played Around With The Keris
As the broken remnants of the Barisan Nasional recuperate and recover what is left of their shattered pride, it would be prudent to take a step back and look at some of the factors that have certainly contributed to the dismal showing the BN component parties and the UMNO party in particular.
It is clear to many that this election was, in some ways, a singularly unique event in the same way that the 2004 elections were special. 2004’s election results could be read as a collective sigh of relief on the part of the Malaysian electorate after twenty years of rule under the Mahathir government, which witnessed a host of controversial incidents ranging from the BMF scandal of the early 1980s all the way up to Ops Lalang in 1987. The enormous mandate given to the Badawi government was a sign that the public was thirsting for change and that they were no longer willing to live with the modes of governance and politics that we have all grown sadly accustomed to for lack of a choice.
This time round, the electorate has once again spoken to signal their utter disillusionment after it became painfully evident that none of the reform policies foregrounded by the Badawi team were ever going to come true. Instead this had been an administration long on gimmicks and novelties, but short on substance and delivery. Was it necessary to send a Malaysian astronaut to space on a Russian craft, to make the vain boast that a Malaysian citizen had been there and done that? If this was meant to assuage the anger and frustration of Malaysians who lived in estates and poorly-run low-cost urban housing, it certainly had the opposite effect of driving home the point that this administration was out of touch with reality and totally disconnected with the needs and wants of the people…
You can read the remaining paragraphs at the www.othermalaysia.org website - and I urge you to read it.
On its homepage, it says “This site was set up by a number of Malaysian scholar-activists and volunteers with the simple aim of providing other sources of information for those who are interested in unearthing aspects of Malaysian history, politics and culture that have thus far been sidelined, marginalised or erased in the official historiography of the post-colonial state. This is not a blog, nor a forum, but rather a resource site that will continue to post articles, columns, travelogues and samples of creative writing by the members of the othermalaysia team and readers of the site. Its aim is to construct a database for those who wish to learn more about Malaysia’s complex and plural history, and to offer a space for young researchers, scholars and activists who wish to contribute to the store of subaltern knowledge in the country.”