Has the fire gone out of control?
Bersih now seems more like a group of chanting, raving sloganeers who’ve forgotten about the cause for free and fair elections.
Mikha Chan, Free Malaysia Today
Revolution is an ugly, drunken monster. It stomps in, upends the furniture, and leaves without so much as an apology or thought to the wreckage in its wake. But we all seem to love it. It’s a heady feeling. We love the idea that people in power can be overturned by the masses by force.
We’ll go into the streets and shout. We’ll chant our slogans, call for the prime minister to step down, recite the government’s many injustices, and get tear-gassed and water-cannoned.
And then we’ll go home, talk about what a good time we had standing up for democracy, proudly parade our bruises. And then, in a couple of months, we’ll forget about the whole thing.
I was a second-year university student when Bersih happened, and I remember how amazing it felt. It was a sudden and empowering rush of optimism. Everyone was talking about it in the weeks before and after. Facebook and the Twittersphere was ablaze with posts about #Bersih.
The Internet, for better or for worse, played a huge part. I remember thinking that what we had in Facebook and Twitter was very much like what fire first was to early man. Watch how a child reacts to an open fire, and you’ll get an idea of what we felt back then.
I wonder now though whether we’ve let that fire spiral out of control.
It’s been nine years now since its inception, and Bersih still seems less of a viable movement and more of a group of chanting, raving sloganeers.
I went to the Bersih 4 rally launch at Petaling Jaya, and I was disappointed with what I saw. I felt that the speakers were, for the most part, rather shallow. The scene was little more than a lot of chest pounding and periodic attempts to pump up the crowd with shouts of “Hidup Bersih!” and slogans insulting the Prime Minister.
