Malaysia’s Gentle Breeze of Political Change
Is it just me, or can everyone else sense a gentle breeze of change blowing in terms of Malaysia’s political landscape these days?
I’ve just read in Malaysiakini that an anti-toll hike jointly organised by DAP, Keadilan, PAS and various NGOs in front of Sunway Pyramid, KL, was well attended (by politically-apathetic Malaysian standards), attracting more than a thousand protesters.
However, there are differing accounts of the crowd size. According to The Sun, there were only 300+ protesters. This can probably be explained if The Sun only counted those ‘core’ party member protesters while excluding the more casual protesters who joined them intermittently, or due to the heavy pro-govt media censorship in Malaysia.
Here are some good photos of the protest in Jeff Ooi’s blog. There are also short YouTube videos of it here:
Whatever it is, the respectable size of this protest, coupled with the turnouts of the other earlier protests against the fuel and electricity-hike, can be taken as an indicator that for the first time in Malaysia, there is widespread dissatisfaction by Malaysians of all races towards the performance of the BN government. Racially-united protests like these has never happened before, with past protests being exclusively focused on particular race or religious issues. I guess everybody’s united against government actions that hurt their pockets 
The increase in protests against the Abdullah administration is also largely caused by the economic slowdown experienced there. Dr Mahathir had fewer of these problems the because of Malaysia’s accelerating ‘Asian Tiger’ economy during the 80’s and early 90’s.
These racially-united protests sends out grave signals to BN, as it would seem that the Opposition are rightly riding on this wave of discontent on their way towards grabbing one of their best election results in recent decades. Again, I would predict that the urban-based DAP would be the biggest benefactor of this discontent with their traditional secular platform of good governance and accountability, followed closely by Keadilan, if it is successful in tapping on to the relatively new phenomenon of the discontented Malay voters.
