Many Malaysians have been waiting for this, and now it is coming at a poignant moment in our nation’s history – our confrontation with a corrupt system concretised vividly in the form of a man who has received an astronomical amount of money that he shouldn’t have but is abusing the nation’s institutions and bending the nation’s laws to exonerate himself and persecute people who are investigating his alleged transgression, a man who is using his supreme power to save his own skin and deceive the public.
This is a moment we have never experienced before. At no time in our history has a single person in the highest office of the land drawn so many Malaysians together to go against him.
We must capture this moment, exercise our power as citizens of a democracy, as stakeholders of this land, to show this man that our power is greater than his, and try as he may to outfox us and suppress our voices with the forces he has co-opted to his side, he must not escape justice.
More than this, as we march as one on Aug 29 and 30, we must insist that we no longer want to put up with a system that is corrupt, a system that gives so much power to one man to do what he pleases while those who would expose him suffer the consequences of his counteroffensives.
If anything is to come out of our street rally to call for his removal from office by legal means, an endeavour that could subject us to harsh reprisals by the forces of the dark side, cause us to suffer bodily harm or arrest or eventual incarceration, it has to be a commitment from our public officials, including our elected representatives in the state and federal legislatures, that they will revamp the system with a commitment to bringing positive reform, so that we can thenceforth move forward towards a better Malaysia.
We want a clean government, a fair government, a government that sees to the needs of every citizen under the Malaysian sun, a government that unites, not divides, that ceases to capitalise on race and religion for its own ends, that restores our battered institutions to their pride of place, a government that will fight for us and with us, not against us.
We want to secure this not just for the present but also because we want a brighter future for our children and their children.
That, as I understand it, is what Bersih 4 is about. And that is what must propel Malaysians who care for their country to go for it – despite the natterings of the nay-sayers, the threats of the police to take severe action, the hinting of dark forces to create violence at the event.
Remember – always – that calling for the prime minister to be removed by constitutional means or to resign of his own volition is well within our rights. Don’t let the inspector-general of police and his officers tell you otherwise.
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This weekend, stand up for our country
Kee Thuan Chye
27 August 2015 – malaysiakini
For A Better Malaysia 