One more year as a yo-yo

All of us who are passionately committed to political and social change should be accustomed to dizzying mood swings.

We oscillate back and forth between emotional extremes; between optimism and pessimism, promise and disappointment, elation and dejection, the giddy heights of hope and the deep, dark depths of despair.

But this year I’ve found my head spinning and my feelings whizzing up and down even more wildly than usual. Is it just me, I wonder, or is it that events have been getting weirder?

Of course there’s plenty of evidence that it could be the latter. Like the revelation that New York financier and former Nasdaq Chairman Bernie Madoff has made-off with a cool US$50 billion.

Like allegations that the governor of Illinois has been trying to sell the senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

Like the press conference in the course of George Bush’s recent surprise farewell visit to Baghdad, during which an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the guest of honour, a deadly insult that Bush later said he found funny.

Or like the equally bizarre spectacle of Robert Mugabe continuing to strut his stuff in Zimbabwe when by rights he should be in the dock in the Hague for all his years of killing, terrorising, impoverishing and neglecting his people.

Of course the wildest mood-swing of the year was from the pinnacle of the March general election results to the pits of disappointment at Anwar Ibrahim’s failure to deliver on his promise of assuming federal power on Sept 16.

But there are plenty of peaks and troughs to distract us here and now. Like the shocking situation in KL, where Barisan Nasional politicians, public officials and their developer cronies are still apparently getting away with writing-off deadly landslides caused by criminal negligence and/or dereliction of their duty as ‘acts of God’.

To think that such atrocious injustice is still going on 15 years after Dr Mahathir Mohomad blamed the almighty for the Highland Towers collapse, I find it hard to decide whether to laugh or cry.

Then I was uplifted to learn that since the PKR came to power in Selangor, Elizabeth Wong has resisted intense pressure to approve applications to build on steep slopes, then immediately cast down by the revelation that a subsidiary of Selangor Dredging has brought a law suit against a community action group devoted to protecting residents’ interests.

Meanwhile, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has raised our hopes by proposing the long-promised Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission and Judicial Appointments Commission ‘reform’ Bills to Parliament - only to dash them with the realisation that the “reforms” appear at best cosmetic, and would leave control of the judiciary and anti-corruption activities in the hands of the government, from which they should rightly be independent.

Is it any wonder, in circumstances as disturbing and dispiriting as these, that our expectations of progress at long, long last quickly switch to sensations of hopelessness?

‘Empower yourself’

But at least I can derive some comfort from the fact that I’m not alone in my widely alternating states of mind. When Antares, an old friend I’ve never actually met, posted one of my columns on his magickriver blogsite recently, he drew a comment from somebody called Backstreetgluttons that expressed the negative side of my feelings more coherently than I could have done myself:

“The great trouble is and we have always noted with extreme frustration, at the hapless situation we are in, with no solution in sight, The painful situation continues like a dubious dying patriarch with terminal multiple cancer and Aids but refusing to die and continuing to plod along bringing misery to one and all.

“What can we do, except wait for the next torturous four years for the election...are we Malaysians born to lose, after everything is said and done? Where is the positive result? Or any at all?”

Antares’ reponse to this was a classic piece of inspiration that richly deserves to be quoted in full but for reasons of space I reproduce only in part:

“Backstreetgluttons - your sense of acute frustration is shared by a great many Malaysians, I’m sure. In truth, we ought to have matured much earlier as a fledgling participatory democracy but, alas, there are too many individuals who opt for their own comfort and illusory security rather than stand up for justice, truth and freedom as (blogger) Raja Petra (Kamarudin) and many others have done, at great personal cost.

“..You ask: ‘What can we do, except wait for the next torturous four years for the election?’ You seem to have answered your own question by choosing to view yourself as a powerless and passive bystander, and consumer of manufactured reality.

“Have you considered the possibility of seeing yourself as an integral aspect of the Collective Psyche, with complex connections to the Morphogenetic Field of the Species, and therefore essential to the functioning of Life on Earth - indeed, the Galaxy and beyond?

“By so doing you will empower yourself and activate your dormant powers of creative visualisation, so that you can use your imagination constructively to design the sort of wholesome political outcome you would desire for yourself, your children and your nation.

“In other words, there will be a different government as soon as enough of us consciously demand it with every atom of our being and every ounce of our individual will.

“Together our collective will must surely precipitate the necessary events and situations to compel Umno/BN to surrender and relinquish their stranglehold on our nation’s destiny.

"This is the option I have chosen and I have vowed never to retreat from my heartfelt desire to see criminals removed from high office and their jobs handed over to decent, competent, compassionate and honest citizens.”

Antares’ words of encouragement to Backstreetgluttons jerked me out of my despondency and wonderfully lifted my spirits.

But since then I’ve noticed that even my seemingly indomitable friend himself is not immune to the yo-yo effect, writing in his latest post that: “I’m tired of saying the same old things about the same old stupid, irritating politicians who stubbornly refuse to resign and are just waiting to be unceremoniously booted out as soon as possible.”

Me too, Antares. Me too. All I can hope for now is that, with the Christmas season of goodwill on the way, we can all get a little rest from another year of emotional yo-yoing, while we treat ourselves and our loved ones to a spot of festive yo-ho-ho-ing.