Perspectives on Bersih 5 from the fringe

COMMENT Dr Mahathir Mohamad is not wrong to label ministers in the likes of Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak as “half-past-six” when he could only utter conclusions without first going through his grey matter about Bersih 5 turnout being lower compared to Bersih 4.

According to Salleh, Bersih has seen the turnout drop by nearly 97 percent.

I wonder where he learnt his mathematics. And, he simply blamed it on Dr Mahathir for the low turnout.

I wonder if he meant that people like me who did not turn up at Bersih 5. Having attended two Bersih events in the past did not make me feel any more lethargic to go for Bersih 5.

In fact, when friends and relatives were asking me whether I was going to Bersih 5, I kept quiet, until the event was over. The reason is because I did not want my absence to demoralise anyone from going for Bersih 5.

Now that most of the people I knew went for Bersih 5, I will write my perspectives from the fringe. My absence this time was due to a promise that I made to my son two years ago to bring him to a father-and-son bonding camp which coincided with the date when Bersih’s Maria Chin Abdullah announced.

One thing I was happy that I was able to do was to tell my son during our trip back on the train that Daddy had foregone the Bersih rally just to spend to fulfil a promise made to him. Updating myself with the latest news for the day, I explained to him what Bersih 5 was about - his future!

I showed him pictures of many of my friends including senior lawyers and people from different backgrounds coming together as one nation, as one people to demand for all five points raised by Bersih 5.

I told him of an uncle and his wife, probably in their 70s, who checked into a budget hotel in Kuala Lumpur just to be able to join Bersih 5.

He was excited the moment he saw some yellow-clad Bersih supporters on the train back to Ipoh. We showed our thumbs-up to these people. Although we did not know each other, we received the thumbs-up from them.

This is Bersih’s culture for the awareness of Salleh, in case he does not know.

More yellow on the inside

While taking a cab to the campsite, I chatted with an old pakcik taxi driver.

“Pakcik tak pergi Bersih 5?” I asked. (Uncle, you are not going to Bersih 5?)

He answered in the negative, saying that he does not like the idea of going on demonstrations. But before I could proceed, he started telling me about RM2.6 billion and a RM2 million diamond ring.

“He thinks that people are stupid!” he remarked. “Tell me which Arab prince would give Najib (Abdul Razak) RM2.6 billion? And that wife of his telling us that she had saved the money from young to buy the diamond ring! How ridiculous can she be?”

I did not have to do much talking. That pakcik is a supporter of Dr Mahathir and he is now bashing Prime Minister Najib and his wife, Rosmah Mansor. I told myself, “Not bad for someone from a rural town in Perak.”

Then, came the issue of the Goods and Services Taxes (GST) and the subsidy cuts which have caused prices to go up.

And he immediately quoted the number of taxi permits to be issued for the whole country, and compared it to the number of taxis in the Klang Valley alone.

That was just one man yellow on the inside now. Surprisingly, the moment I mentioned about Bersih 5 during the camp, conversations were struck with a number of fathers like me.

Interestingly, it is not only people from the Klang Valley who are yellow at heart. Although these people were not present at Bersih 5, they were also yellow on the inside.

Wearing yellow with Bersih 5 is one way of making a statement. I noticed that even Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown did not wear yellow when she turned up at the Bersih 5 rally in United Kingdom.

A chef and his wife, for example, also said enough is enough when we talked about the 1MDB scandal. They were yellow all the way.

We also talked about the East Coast Rail Link project worth RM55 billion which is clearly a soft loan, and the yellow chef and his wife also agreed that the loan would be paid by future generations of Malaysians. I wonder what the repercussions are!

Who else does not know who Malaysian Official No 1 (MO1) is? After all, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan had spelt out his name to an international audience.