One of the more edifying examples of collaborative leadership in forging urgently-needed reform comes to an end when the Ambiga Sreenevasan-A Samad Said partnership that spearheaded polls reform advocacy group, Bersih, comes to an end on Nov 30.
Lawyer and former Bar Council president Ambiga steps down as Bersih co-chair on that date, with deputy Maria Chin Abdullah (left) taking over the reins.
National literary laureate Samad will continue to be co-chair of the movement, a role he played, in tandem with Ambiga, with a quiet panache at once inspiriting and bracing.
Not since a coterie of academicians and people who had distinguished themselves in the professions came together to form the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia in 1968 to push for pressing political reform has a comparably notable partnership such as had led Bersih the past two years been assembled to push for the fulfillment of an urgent societal need - electoral reform.
Anyone doubting the need for that reform has merely to contemplate the BN’s 47 percent take of the popular vote at the general election last May enabling a 60 percent haul of the seats for the coalition in Parliament to discover that arguments against such reform slink away in embarrassment faster than the demonstrators who paraded their behinds in front of Ambiga’s house in an attempt to intimidate her into abandonment of her leadership of Bersih.
There was nothing more egregious that marked the opposition to Bersih and Ambiga than that action and nothing that lifted the movement’s cause and its embattled leader’s stature more than her response of an offer of refreshments to her erstwhile interlocutors.
Grace notes are rarely struck in the course of encounters between exponents of a compelling cause and buffoons on hire.
Ambiga’s grace under pressure, incidentally Ernest Hemingway’s capsule definition of courage, will abide in the memory.
Whether the Election Commission will continue to dummy and weave its way around Bersih’s demand for electoral reform as it did between the movement’s inception in 2007 and its apogee in the protest march it organised in April, 2012, remains to be seen.
The general election results last May which saw BN’s 47 percent popular take translated into a 60 percent representative haul is the sort of parliamentary sorcery that has marked the tenures of a Robert Mugabe or a Ferdinand Marcos; it can’t be allowed continued re-enactment in a democracy, even one as defective as Malaysia’s.
It was the singular distinction of Ambiga’s tenure as Bersih leader, bolstered by Samad’s supporting role which oozed gravitas, that the cause of electoral reform gained a moral immediacy it did not quite enjoy prior to her advent in its ranks.
The partnership between Ambiga and Samad was a powerful antidote to the bigoted impulses of the groups that quickly assembled to thwart Bersih and just as quickly melted away before the dignified deportment and reasoned espousal of the movement’s co-chairs.
Top item on the agenda
No doubt Bersih is braced for proposals for the parliamentary redrawing of constituencies that the Election Commission will soon unveil - a scheme that is expected to restart Bersih-organised protests at its anticipated inequity.
Electoral reform is the top item on the agenda of political reform in Malaysia; other reforms to the economic, judicial, and law enforcement sectors of national life would be unavailing should the present electoral system remain intact.
Hence the role of Bersih in the overall movement for political reform will continue to grow in significance which makes the question of its leadership a matter of weighty importance.
With Ambiga stepping down, Maria Chin steps up to the plate. Ambiga is not an easy act to follow but with help from Samad, in the co-chair role, Maria should do nicely.
But before that a doffing of the hat is required of the reform movement in the country for the service rendered by Ambiga.
No since the advent of the Gerakan in the late 1960s has progressive forces in the country had occasion to witness an exhilarating upsurge in public interest in a critical area of political reform.
As emblematic embodiment, this spontaneous welling-up of popular interest threw up ‘Auntie Annie’ (left), the retired teacher and grandmother whose participation in the pivotal Bersih-organised march of July 2011 endures in the memory like Ambiga’s graciousness to the posterior-displaying brigade that had attempted to cow her.
No doubt, high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are overcome.
Lawyer and former Bar Council president Ambiga steps down as Bersih co-chair on that date, with deputy Maria Chin Abdullah (left) taking over the reins. National literary laureate Samad will continue to be co-chair of the movement, a role he played, in tandem with Ambiga, with a quiet panache at once inspiriting and bracing.
Not since a coterie of academicians and people who had distinguished themselves in the professions came together to form the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia in 1968 to push for pressing political reform has a comparably notable partnership such as had led Bersih the past two years been assembled to push for the fulfillment of an urgent societal need - electoral reform.
Anyone doubting the need for that reform has merely to contemplate the BN’s 47 percent take of the popular vote at the general election last May enabling a 60 percent haul of the seats for the coalition in Parliament to discover that arguments against such reform slink away in embarrassment faster than the demonstrators who paraded their behinds in front of Ambiga’s house in an attempt to intimidate her into abandonment of her leadership of Bersih.There was nothing more egregious that marked the opposition to Bersih and Ambiga than that action and nothing that lifted the movement’s cause and its embattled leader’s stature more than her response of an offer of refreshments to her erstwhile interlocutors.
Grace notes are rarely struck in the course of encounters between exponents of a compelling cause and buffoons on hire.
Ambiga’s grace under pressure, incidentally Ernest Hemingway’s capsule definition of courage, will abide in the memory.
Whether the Election Commission will continue to dummy and weave its way around Bersih’s demand for electoral reform as it did between the movement’s inception in 2007 and its apogee in the protest march it organised in April, 2012, remains to be seen.
The general election results last May which saw BN’s 47 percent popular take translated into a 60 percent representative haul is the sort of parliamentary sorcery that has marked the tenures of a Robert Mugabe or a Ferdinand Marcos; it can’t be allowed continued re-enactment in a democracy, even one as defective as Malaysia’s.
It was the singular distinction of Ambiga’s tenure as Bersih leader, bolstered by Samad’s supporting role which oozed gravitas, that the cause of electoral reform gained a moral immediacy it did not quite enjoy prior to her advent in its ranks.
The partnership between Ambiga and Samad was a powerful antidote to the bigoted impulses of the groups that quickly assembled to thwart Bersih and just as quickly melted away before the dignified deportment and reasoned espousal of the movement’s co-chairs.
Top item on the agenda
No doubt Bersih is braced for proposals for the parliamentary redrawing of constituencies that the Election Commission will soon unveil - a scheme that is expected to restart Bersih-organised protests at its anticipated inequity.
Electoral reform is the top item on the agenda of political reform in Malaysia; other reforms to the economic, judicial, and law enforcement sectors of national life would be unavailing should the present electoral system remain intact.
Hence the role of Bersih in the overall movement for political reform will continue to grow in significance which makes the question of its leadership a matter of weighty importance.
With Ambiga stepping down, Maria Chin steps up to the plate. Ambiga is not an easy act to follow but with help from Samad, in the co-chair role, Maria should do nicely.
But before that a doffing of the hat is required of the reform movement in the country for the service rendered by Ambiga.
No since the advent of the Gerakan in the late 1960s has progressive forces in the country had occasion to witness an exhilarating upsurge in public interest in a critical area of political reform.As emblematic embodiment, this spontaneous welling-up of popular interest threw up ‘Auntie Annie’ (left), the retired teacher and grandmother whose participation in the pivotal Bersih-organised march of July 2011 endures in the memory like Ambiga’s graciousness to the posterior-displaying brigade that had attempted to cow her.
No doubt, high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are overcome.
TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them. It is the ideal occupation for a temperament that finds power fascinating and its exercise abhorrent.
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