This Time, Pakatan Rakyat In the Flesh
Jangan tengok siapa yang bercakap, tengok apa yang dipercakapkan
By Farouk A. Peru
I arrived early this time, almost two hours early and even then there were Malaysian looking people loitering around the entrance of the University of Westminster next to Baker Street station. I didn’t want to ask them of course, in case the Chinese looking people turned out to be from the People’s Republic and the Malay looking people turned out to be from South America. Trust me, in London, everyone can look like anyone.
As 5pm drew close, it was unmistakeable that these people were Malaysians, you can tell from the prevalence of the ‘lah’ in the air. It was a good feeling, a feeling of being home. One thing which I didn’t like was that the Malaysians were mostly hanging out with members of their own race, except a few of them. To their credit, the members of the organisers, the Anwar Ibrahim Club UK headed by Mr Hiu Woong-Sin were a mixed bunch. That was good. On top of that, it was also good to see the visionary Sufian Shamsuddin there manning his own video cam.
As we filled the lecture hall, it was good to see every element of the Malaysian demographic represented. It was also good to see how naturally we made acquaintances. That wasn’t too difficult I guess, given that we not only had in common our cultural backgrounds but also our opposition to the sorry state of affairs back home.
At 6.20, we nearly a full house but people trickled in, as opposed to last evening at the LSE where the ushers had to turn people out. Perhaps it was the fact that it was Friday evening and people were doing their TGIF thing or perhaps it was the fact that this location was not quite as central as the LSE.
We opened with one Jay Sharma, a Malaysian born London-based activist. Jay recounted for us the days of Ops Lalang which was sort of before my time, although I do remember the headline of the Star when it was allowed to republish (it was ‘We’re Back’!). Jay, in his self-parodying style, recounted for the audience how different things were then, without the internet and cheap international calls. Despite this, he managed to find avenues of activism and managed to raise awareness of this episode in conferences. Jay ended with a moving poem, highly allegorical yet highly poignant.
Next came one Dr Yolanda Augustin whom I thought was an Englishwoman at first. It turned out that she was a school friend of Nurul Izzah’s and had witnessed Anwar’s family’s traumatising time during his removal from office and incarceration back in 1998. It was the first time for me that this episode was brought up close and the images which Yolanda invoked were very disturbing. The manner in which Anwar was arrested and detained without trial is a real shame on the administration at the time. Yolanda certainly made a case for the dismissal of the nefarious ISA law.
Next came two unexpected speakers who, in my opinion anyway, provided the most substantial information in the entire talk. First, Sdr Teng Chang Khim, Speaker for the Selangor State Legislative Assembly and second Haji Abdul Malik Kassim, the State Minister for Religious Affairs, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs and Chairman of the Penang International Halal Hub Task Force. These two men provided actual progress reports detailing the advancements in the state administrations of Selangor and Penang and these reports were very heartening to me. No rhetoric necessary. Just hard facts.
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