Rakyat gagah, Razakyat gagal

Here’s hoping that you fluent speakers of Bahasa Malaysia will forgive my probably garbled (mis)use of the language, but I’m still ga-ga with surprise and delight at the utter failure of the formerly apparently invincible Razak-led ruling regime to resist the new-found might of the people.

Because I have to confess that, in the light of BN’s evident determination to steal the 14th general election by resorting to every desperate hook and crook in the book, I’d come to doubt that Pakatan Harapan had a hope in hell of winning it.

In fact, by December last year I felt so defeated in my hopes of helping Malaysia’s good citizens and gutsy critizens to rid their beloved country of its crooked, corrupt and incompetent ever-ruling BN regime, and so distressed and depressed by my feelings of futility and failure after writing 500,000 words or so of anti-regime columny and calumny for Malaysiakini, that I found myself literally lost for more words.

And in any case, I convinced myself that my lack of words would be no loss because, as a prominent anti-BN activist told me years earlier, as a ‘mat salleh’ or more accurately ‘mad salleh’ writing only in English, I was probably preaching only to the converted.

Or, in other words, I was driving the above-mentioned good citizens and courageous critizens crazy with my endlessly-repetitive anti-BN columnies and calumnies, but completely failing to reach, let alone convert, any of the millions of nit-witizens who either mindlessly supported the regime or didn’t bother voting at all, not to mention the countless outright s**tizens actively involved in or with BN.

Whatever, I must have been doing something amiss, as my silence since December has clearly been golden, given that in the mere five months since then, the rakyat has done what my words had failed to persuade or help it to do for the previous 11 years.

And more than a few of those wasted words, I should probably now blush to recall, were highly critical or at least disrespectful of the man who to my astonishment has been arguably most instrumental in inspiring and empowering the majority of the rakyat to finally break BN’s death-grip on Malaysia, former BN prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Though looking back over my files, I’m reminded that I shouldn’t really be so surprised at Mahathir’s second coming as prime minister, as the very first piece I penned for Malaysiakini, on June 16, 2006, happens to have been about the man himself and entitled ‘At last, an opposition’.

But I have to admit that it was meant more sarcastically than seriously, and thus can hardly be seen as prophetic. And though I have as high hopes of his premiership this time around as the rakyat so evidently does, I hesitate to prophesise what his true intentions may be.

To do away with divisive race- and religion-based parties, I hope, in order to prevent any recurrence of the social divisiveness fake piety and criminal hypocrisy of the likes of Umno and the dangerous fundamentalism of its on-again, off-again theocratic partner in grime, PAS.

Plus to restore those essentials of a genuine democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, freedom of opinion and speech, and of course, freedom of the press or more precisely these days, the news media.

‘Lies and spin’

Mention of which brings me to the first and still foremost of Malaysian sources of news and views, free of BN lies and spin, and thus possibly one of the most potent forces enabling the rakyat to finally overpower the BN regime, Malaysiakini.

In my humble opinion, its founders, Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, and every member of their talented and courageous staff, deserve the undying gratitude of every freedom-loving and now hopefully liberated Malaysian.

Certainly, I’m personally eternally grateful for the pleasure and privilege of working for and with them, and for all the freedom they’ve given me to say my piece on behalf of Malaysia and Malaysians without fear or untoward favour.

But I’m not sure how much of a favour they’d be doing themselves by letting me resume writing a column or even occasional articles for them following my recent five-month silence.

Because, as surely they must know as well as I do, Malaysia’s new old prime minister Mahathir, presumably due to bitter experience of various ‘orang puteh’ back in the days of British colonialism, views us as something more like ‘orang ptui’.

And frankly, I can’t say I blame him. So if Steven and Prem are smart, and as far as I’m concerned there are none smarter, they might well opt to leave me off their roster.

After all, now that the rakyat has proven itself gagah, and rendered the ‘Razakyat’ utterly gagal, Malaysiakiniwould be as ga-ga as I am not to hope for repeal of the Printing, Publications and Presses Act and their resultant freedom to produce a hard-copy newspaper. And crazy to let Dr M’s distaste for an orang ptui, and an Australian orang ptui to boot, to get in their way.

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DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns for Malaysiakini include “Mad about Malaysia,” “Even Madder about Malaysia,” “Missing Malaysia,” “1Malaysia.con” and “Malaysia Mania.” - Mkini