Malaysia General Election 14 - Part I

I'm still on cloud 9 from all the exhilaration from my home country's general election. Even after more than a week since the public announcement of the results in favour of the formerly opposition coalition party; Pakatan Harapan. 

Why this election was so important for us Malaysians? That is because our country have been governed by the same coalition party, Barisan National, for 61 years. This is considered to be one of "the longest ruling coalition in the democratic world" according to Wikipedia. Now I will not go into details about the history of Barisan National because it will take forever, will be too much drama and information hard to digest or comprehend. Even the hubster got confuse half way through as I was story telling it to him. Mind you, he comes from a republican country where their slogan is still "égalité, fraternité, liberté". 

I can however tell you about why we vote for a change. After a 61 year rule of the same coalition.  it is no wonder we need a change or a breathe of fresh air. Their divide and rule method no longer work for us since a long time ago. That is not amounting to the corruption running amok within the government, between government officials and private persons/businesses and the rampant abuse of power (media, justice system, election). 

People started to rebelled more against the system after the then Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, were sacked and later on imprisoned in 1998. Read more about the Reformasi movement here. That time I was unable to vote (not of a legal age to do so) and didn't understand what was happening - politics was far from my mind then. One has to understand, during those times the WWW was a pretty new thing to us. Not everyone had a computer back then, never mind an e-mail address! We sort of believed in what we read/watch/heard from the media, which in our case, controlled by the ruling government. Unlike the USA where freedom of speech was written in their constitution, we have our own "brand of freedom of speech/media" all courtesy of you know who. 

Further down the road, we also have Najib Razak, our ousted Prime Minister. This man is one heck of robber. I would like to think that he literally rose to power all due to his father, the late Abdul Razak Hussein. And because of our nature of "mengenang budi" (recalling a favour) and "mengenang jasa" (commemorate the services) of his late father (2nd Prime Minister from 1970 -1976), many political figures "closes one eye" (or both) to his discrepancies. Now when I look back, all I could think of was "WTH were our forefathers thinking putting him up in politics in the first place?!?!" and "I wished we had invented a time machine. I would have gladly given his father a condom!". 

But I digress for things won't have turned out to be in the people's favour if it was the other way. We wouldn't be savouring our hard earned victory now and cherished the meaning of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people". 

Part II will tell you why it is our hard earned victory.