What did we achieve yesterday?

And united, as fellow-Malaysians, we took to the streets in one voice to oppose what we consider a corrupt government. And we took to the streets not to do violence. We took to the streets as a demonstration of peace. That’s what we gained yesterday.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

I got up early today. I wanted to get a head start and write something before I hit the road. That’s because at noon today, GMT, I will be at Julian Assange’s house to celebrate his 40th birthday and his home is a more than four-hour drive from Manchester. I will probably have to sleep in London and come home tomorrow.

But before I started writing I thought I would first have a look at the video below and I starting crying (old men of 61 like me get very emotional when we are nearer to our graves).

The government says that BERSIH was a failure. Some commentaries even said it is a lose-lose situation. No one won yesterday, they said.

I don’t know what they mean by win and lose. How do you translate win and lose? I suppose each person has his or her own way of looking at things. That would be their interpretation, of course.

I don’t know what we are supposed to have lost. But what we did win was that Malaysians all over the world, in particular in Malaysia, came together as one. That is what we won.

Yesterday, we were not rich men or poor. We were not Malays or non-Malays. We were not Muslims or non-Muslims. We were just fellow-Malaysians.

And united, as fellow-Malaysians, we took to the streets in one voice to oppose what we consider a corrupt government. And we took to the streets not to do violence. We took to the streets as a demonstration of peace.

That’s what we gained yesterday. All the rabble rousing and the enemies of Islam and enemies of Malays propaganda and rhetoric failed. Malaysians did not buy these lies and spins of the government. And yesterday was proof of that.

I don’t know in what way we failed yesterday. Was it because we did not get a crowd of 300,000? Was it because one man died and more than 1,000 were arrested? Was it because many got beaten up and injured? Was it because we failed to present the 8-point memorandum to His Majesty the Agong? Was it because even if we did get to present the 8-point memorandum to His Majesty there would be no electoral reforms anyway?

I don’t know what our failure is supposed to have been. But amongst all those so-called failures we met with one major success that overrides all those failures -- in the event you still see yesterday as a failure. And that major success is there were no Malays, Chinese, Indians, ‘lain-lain’, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics or whatever on the streets yesterday. For those couple of hours we were all fellow-Malaysians.

That was what we succeeded in doing yesterday. And that is worth all the tea in China.