The road outside my polling station Dato Onn Jaafar School in USJ 15, Subang Jaya.
Now that Malaysians are recovering from their pleasant surprise or shock from the most awesome moment in our history, we still need to be watchful. Currently, each of the parties from the opposition coalition is making recommendations to the Sultan of Perak on who the Mentri Besar should be. Apparently, there are SMSes going around that PAS (Islamic party) is trying to hijack the whole thing despite it having won the least number of seats in the state (PAS - 7, Parti Keadilan Rakyat - 8 and Democratic Action Party - 18). If anyone should be the MB, it should come from the party in the coalition that has the most number of seats, i.e. DAP. Otherwise, the voters will lose confidence, I think. This seems strange because from my limited dealings with a PAS leader in Selangor, he said that PAS will respect minorities' rights and they know the terms that they were voted in - mainly to fight corruption and injustice.
Selangor will be an interesting state to watch since its soon-to-be-sworn in MB Khalid Ibrahim from Parti Keadilan Rakyat (Keadilan) has called for the Official Secrets Act to be repealed in Selangor. There were rumours going around that people were tearing up documents. Yes, that’s because the leaders of the ruling party did not expect such a catastrophic loss in the elections.
Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory is another tricky area to be watched. Described as an unprecedented coup by the Sun, DAP, Keadilan and PAS won 10 of the 11 seats, with Barisan Nasional taking only Setiawangsa. There are likely to be tensions in policy making because the Federal Territory Minister post is held by the sole BN winner.
Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory is another tricky area to be watched. Described as an unprecedented coup by the Sun, DAP, Keadilan and PAS won 10 of the 11 seats, with Barisan Nasional taking only Setiawangsa. There are likely to be tensions in policy making because the Federal Territory Minister post is held by the sole BN winner.
Now that I have recovered from the exhaustion of the general election (March 8), I can now sit down and give you an update on what had transpired in the last few days.
For one, although I had hoped for much change and the best to happen from the general election (March 8), I’m still in a daze when that prayer turned into reality. As a friend said, it all seems so surreal. That’s because after 50 years of seeing the entrenchment of Barisan Nasional government and the snowballing corruption, injustice and racist policies, it was so difficult to imagine anything else to happen, except for continuous rot.
My church members and I had in the last one year cried out to God to save this country from corruption, cronyism, high crime rate, racism, religious oppression, unfair laws, worsening education system and unfair media reporting. The three-hour prayer the night before the elections (9pm-12midnight) was beyond description. A church member whom we didn’t know until that night, joined us. Her prayers were precise and positively declaring change and victory in the coming elections. Our spirits could not help but rise. If prayers in previous sessions left me feeling comforted knowing that God is sovereign, on that night, there was a sense of confidence and victory in the air. We had such an awesome time that the 3-hour session seemed short. At 12 midnight, the woman who joined us took out a (Jewish?) horn and blew it as we were singing praises to the Lord Almighty and enjoying His wonderful presence. It was a spectacular moment, one that I had never experienced before. It was as though we were on the mountain tops and overlooking a vast valley and the sound from the horn was a sign of the beginning of a battle (in the spiritual realm) as well as a declaration of victory. We left church at 12.15am and I went straight home to sleep to prepare for the next day’s work – a gruelling 20-hour of keeping tabs on the elections.
For one, although I had hoped for much change and the best to happen from the general election (March 8), I’m still in a daze when that prayer turned into reality. As a friend said, it all seems so surreal. That’s because after 50 years of seeing the entrenchment of Barisan Nasional government and the snowballing corruption, injustice and racist policies, it was so difficult to imagine anything else to happen, except for continuous rot.
My church members and I had in the last one year cried out to God to save this country from corruption, cronyism, high crime rate, racism, religious oppression, unfair laws, worsening education system and unfair media reporting. The three-hour prayer the night before the elections (9pm-12midnight) was beyond description. A church member whom we didn’t know until that night, joined us. Her prayers were precise and positively declaring change and victory in the coming elections. Our spirits could not help but rise. If prayers in previous sessions left me feeling comforted knowing that God is sovereign, on that night, there was a sense of confidence and victory in the air. We had such an awesome time that the 3-hour session seemed short. At 12 midnight, the woman who joined us took out a (Jewish?) horn and blew it as we were singing praises to the Lord Almighty and enjoying His wonderful presence. It was a spectacular moment, one that I had never experienced before. It was as though we were on the mountain tops and overlooking a vast valley and the sound from the horn was a sign of the beginning of a battle (in the spiritual realm) as well as a declaration of victory. We left church at 12.15am and I went straight home to sleep to prepare for the next day’s work – a gruelling 20-hour of keeping tabs on the elections.
the room where I was to cast my vote. I was done at 9.10am. For the rest of the day, I waited to see what the Lord has in store for us, while doing my normal tasks at the office. Results started to coming in around 11pm and before we knew it, by 2am or thereabouts, it was confirmed that the opposition coalition made up of Keadilan, DAP and PAS had achieved the impossible - breaking BN's two-third majority in parliament. They managed to get 82 parliament seats out of 222 seats! This is historic! No Malaysians have expected it although many of us dreamt of the day such a thing would happen.DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang said he expected the wind of change to blow but did not expect it to blow this strong and hard. Haha! Teresa Kok (DAP) said it was divine intervention because for the first time, Christians from every nook and corner began to take interest in the affairs of this country by holding forums and holding candidates accountable, on top of praying fervently. Some even offered themselves as candidates in the elections to bring that change. I have told some friends that it was impossible to break BN's two-third majority but we must pray for that to happen. And it has happened. In fact, I was told not to limit God in my prayers to just the two-third but to let His will be done. Five states taken over by the opposition, wow, that was beyond what we could imagine. Now we need to pray for a smooth transition of the state administrations.
Raja Petra is right in observing that society must continue to keep watch on the progress and hold the new leaders accountable. We didn't vote them in for another round of oppression. Check out his site on the need for the role of Ombudsman in The Aftermath of the 'Bloodbath' at
http://www.malaysia-today.net/2008/content/view/4095/84/
2 comments:
your link to raja petra's site is not working. you used a google mail link and not his website link.
Thanks for pointing that out. It's corrected. Harum
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