What Tsunami? It was a political awakening

by P Dev Anand Pillai
I had always participated in the workings of general elections since the time I was a staff in the Suruhanjaya PilihanRaya Selangor in the early 90s. Being a Polling and Counting Agent (PACA) in 1999 and 2004 general elections gave me the insight as to how it all worked at the end of the day. But this time, it was different, what I witnessed was a coming together of the whole country with a motive to change the federal government for the first time in history, friends from overseas whom had almost given up on their country of birth had made time to return to try to make the change happen. It would have, had it not been for massive fraud by the custodians of the elections themselves, the Election Commission, who were in cahoots with the  police.
We had prepared ourselves after being alerted that there could be a high number of foreign voters trying their luck at our voting centres and true enough they came in buses, vans, jeeps and even police vans with police protection to vote in our elections. Most of these workers had dubious looking NRICs, some with very pale looking old versions of our identity card and they seemed so confident of knowing what to do. Some even had their “saluran” numbers ready at hand with them as they alighted from their vehicles. The police and the Election Commission officials welcomed them as though they were old friends knowing very well that this regime can only be saved by foreigners who will one day rule this country through the loophole in the constitution which will allow them to be Malays constitutionally. It is indeed a sad state of events for us the citizens of this beloved land of ours.

DAP’s victorious outing
The Democratic Action Party had sowed the fruits of labour which they had been diligently working on for the past five years since 2008. The Ubah and Ini Kalilah theme caught on with the people of both East and West Malaysia and made the people ready to see for the first time in 56 years a change of government at the Federal level and a change which many in their heart of hearts thought will bring about a more just and fairer Malaysia. Winning 38 parliamentary seats was indeed a record for the DAP which brings about the question of why was this called a “Chinese Tsunami” and why did the regime allow the Utusan Melayu headlines to read” Apa lagi Cina Mahu?”
It was more of a Urban political awakening by the masses who were exposed to the other side of the coin and whom had given up on the one sided state propaganda that the pay TV stations portray of the ruling BN regime. The DAP would not have won in many of its 38 seats had it not been for the support that it had from the Indians and the Malays as well. Many of the educated and the open minded Malays from the working class voted for the DAP but did not shout about it to their kampung kin. The figures would not have crossed the winning mark had it not been for the large number of Malaysians who returned home just to vote. Some of them were coming back to their old housing estates after nearly 20 years to just vote. There were a vast number of Malays who attended ceramahs by the DAP and were well aware of the facts when it came to the state of the national debt, the level of money siphoning from federal projects by cronies, the state of corruption and simply a show of arrogance and lavishness by the ruling elite. These were not lies and fairy tales it was there for all to see in the social media.