Three days ago, Pete Teo and Liew Seng Tat launched their Merdeka video featuring Liow Tiong Lai, as minister, citizen, husband. In true Teo style, the video was thought-provoking and technically challenging with his usual message of hope for a better nation. The video has since gone viral,  generating 150,000 views in 72 hours.

What is interesting is the reaction to the video. Liow is the MCA president, a party that has failed to capture the imagination of the demographic it was formed to represent. In recent years, this party hasn't even come close to anything resembling mass engagement of Malaysian society, and continues in its primitive and parochial notions of how politics should be.

The best representation of the MCA is their last party video ‘Stronger Together’, where they sing and dance, rejoicing in an otherwise dark room. This accurately depicts their mentality as celebrating themselves in their own bubble, without any sense or connection to the outside world – the very people they are supposed to engage and serve as a political party. That video was released three years ago, and has garnered a grand total of approximately 5,500 views. Small wonder most of the Chinese community have branded them ineffective and ‘syiok sendiri’.

Despite their many efforts, MCA has failed to convince the larger Chinese community that they are something worth looking at. This is the hallmark of irrelevance, and soon they will become insignificant as they lavish self-praise and congratulate themselves for circuitously doing the same things that brought them to this brink of annihilation.

But now this! This video has changed that. Whilst there are always detractors out there and the trolls have come out from under the woodwork to undermine, criticise and insolently analyse this short clip, the MCA president has never ever before experienced this level of publicity. This scares many groups of people.

For his opponents, the enemy who they deemed inconsequential suddenly has access to a large audience. The opposition has gone into defence mode by attacking. As they unleash their trolls and attempt unlettered interpretations of what is basically a film calling for national unity and hope, they shame themselves by taking a tribal hardline to a non-partisan message.

Why must they belittle this message? Are these the leaders we want? We should have leaders who can look beyond their own petty leanings and celebrate good messages from whatever quadrant.

Within the MCA there are rumblings. Fear grips them as their agoraphobic and antisocial egos are confronted and they are suddenly faced with the reality there are others out there. This is a wake-up call for the party. One they cannot ignore any longer. If they are smart they will leverage off it.

For the far right, their provincial mindset will inevitably cast their own interpretations of the video as an affront to their racial supremacy. They need to mature and realise that this is about unity not an assault on any race.

For the greater public, this has touched many hearts out there. People of all races have seen it as a uniting force. It has created a greater understanding of how the Chinese in Malaysia feel, and that is important, for understanding one another's grouses will pave the way to healing a nation increasingly divided by  racial and religious rhetoric.

As the video portrays a leader who acknowledges the angst and deficiencies of a government he is a member of, it also shares his melancholic musings of his original dream and his encouragement of hope.

As a citizen who has shown his despondence to events around him, he accepts that hope is still important, as a federal minister gives time to show he hears and understands the grouses of the common man. The last scene where he hangs the flag shows his acceptance that there must be hope as he accepts that this is still our country.

Pete Teo's and Liew Seng Tat's handling of this messaging is masterful as it crosses political party divides and has a truly Malaysian message. One thing is for certain, Liow Tiong Lai is not irrelevant now.