Wind of change

I was listening to my "mix-tape", what you iPod young uns' would call "playlist", the other day. As I was pounding asphalt on neighbourhood streets, attempting to meet my brisk-walk quota for the week, an old favourite, Scorpion's 'Wind of Change' popped up.

The mother of all protest songs, it was written by Klaus Meine, vocalist of popular German rock band Scorpions. Its lyrics and rhythm celebrating glasnost, perestroika and the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in that golden age between the late eighties and early nineties.

My mind immediately rewound to those glory childhood days of yore. The time of Reagan and Gorbachev, of Miami Vice, bad hairdos, cassette mix-tapes and the Walkman.

When socksless loafers, mono-gloves and corset-wearing in public was okay and shuffling was still called by its proper name of 'break dancing'.

But cringe-inducing memories aside, I can't help but notice the simile of those nostalgic bygone days with current events, in particular, a seeming re-run of the 'last Soviet leader', Mikhail Gorbachev.

A hugely popular "reformist", working to salvage an age old system, faced with internal dissent and a crumbling economy, via a public relations agenda with grandiose names like glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).

Glasnost was the catch-term for Gorbachev's efforts to combat corruption - its present day equivalent would be "transparency".

While perestroika was the pet name the Soviet leader addressed his fight to restructure the monolithic state administration, that the USSR was world-famous for.

While he gained worldwide respect for his reforms, his efforts were the death-knell of the old system, and he faced insurmountable roadblocks from within his own ranks, pedantic holdovers of the old-guard, unable or unwilling to change.

In the end, all the remnants of the Soviet bear, Gorbachev included, were brushed aside by the people, tired of the long years of oppression.

The fall of the communist Soviet government was a signal that triggered the fall of Soviet states once subject to Mother Russia and the Eastern Bloc countries that it supported both militarily and economically.

Change we can believe in

The simile I observed to his tale, is not present day Russia or any reformed communist country, but of the good ol' USA itself and to a certain extent, our very own Malaysia.

I can't help but muse that US president Barack Obama is the perfect stand-in for Gorbachev, his 'Change We Can Believe In' slogan and "Yes We Can" chant, an echo of the latter's Glasnost and Perestroika.

His socialist-like working-class-favouring financial and healthcare reforms being snubbed by hardline capitalists that formed the bulk of the US Senate, as the public tired of stodgy reforms moved to reject both Obama and protest against the capitalist ideology of the old system, a defiance they expressed via the Occupy movement.

And the fall of the Soviet states and the USSR-backed Eastern Bloc mimicked by the humpty-dumpty of the Arab states, as one by one the dominos of the US-propped less than democratic nations are toppled by the wind of change of the Arab Spring.

'Et tu, Najib?'

Another candidate for the Gorbachev story is current Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak and his predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

We can compare Pak Lah, as Abdullah is affectionately known, as the 'Gobarchev' whose sweeping reforms against corruption for one, was hampered by the fallibility of his own people (cough) KJ (cough) fourth floor (cough), and the resistance of Umno warlords leading to his eventual downfall.

And like Gorbachev, who was 'replaced' by his successor Boris Yeltsin, Pak Lah was 'replaced' by his erstwhile deputy Najib through the "Et tu, Brutus?" agency of now DPM Muhyiddin Yassin during an "Ides of March" moment at an Umno supreme council meeting.

Similarly Najib, like Yeltsin, had to resort to a public relations campaign via the help of foreign consultants to manage the angry unruly rakyat and the old guard warlords, Umno ones for Najib and communist ones for Yeltsin.

Something well chronicled in the Time article and Hollywood movie of the Russian leader and the Apco-FBC tales of Najib.

In the same vein with Yeltsin's campaign and Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika, Najib has his '1Malaysia', which he is adamant has nothing to do with fellow Apco clients 1Indonesia and 1Israel, as well as his GTP to 'restructure' government, PTP to reduce corruption and reforms to adduce 'transparency' and liberal policies in governance.

I wonder if what is true for Gorbachev will also be true for Najib and Obama. That theirs will be the last gasps of the regime the are trying to salvage and rescue.

Will Obama be the last of the capitalist US presidents? Will Najib be the last of the Umno warlords?

The answer is perhaps out there somewhere, in the Occupy movements spreading worldwide like wildfire, of Malaysia's Bersih and Himpun 2.0. The answer perhaps is with the people who are speaking out and have spoken.

Whatever the case, I wonder if Meine, who wrote Wind of Change would have written the lyrics to that immortal song differently, had he visited Kuala Lumpur and Parliament House yesterday, instead of Moscow all those years ago.

"I follow Parliament Road
down to Lake Gardens
listening to Himpun 2.0".

HAZLAN ZAKARIA is a member of the Malaysiakini team.