Comment: Bersih 3.0 – Up close and personal

My prime minister expounds 1 Malaysia all the time – what is 1Malaysia to him and to us?

The true spirit of 1Malaysia as I see it was seen at the Bersih 3.0 rally which I fortunately attended.

Mr Prime Minister you should have been there to see it and feel it for yourself instead of being in Sarawak.

I was at Masjid Jamek at 11.30am on the 28th. It was peaceful and had a carnival feel about it.

You might wonder why all these people were there so early when the rally was scheduled for 2 p.m.

Well for one, we knew that the main transport system into the heart of town would definitely be shut down rendering it virtually impossible to be there. So being there early allowed me to see the build up and I can assure you there was not a single incident of ill-feeling anywhere around the area I was at.

With the firing of the first round of tear gas, I was caught off guard!

What happened a few hundred yards away to warrant this?

And so my experience of 1Malaysia began.

People turned back into alleys, started handing out salt, pouring water from bottles to wash out smarting eyes.

People were calling out “Don’t run, don’t rush, take care.”

We were guided through a building in Masjid India and into another road. I stopped to get my bearings along a row of shops and I saw about 6 to 8 policemen running away from the crowd.

For a second I thought the crowd had turned on them but no, they had thrown canisters of teargas into the crowd and were running away.

I walked all the way to Semua House, into Dang Wangi and then into Jalan Ampang to get to the LRT station there – which was closed too.

Too tired to walk any further, I decided to sit down and wait. There I met a gentleman who had flown in from Terengganu that morning to attend the rally.

He was waiting to get back to KL Sentral to take the ERL to the airport for a flight back to Terengganu the same day.

“What made you come all this way?,” I asked.

“This is important, it is not just for today,” he said

“Things have become so bad we need to do something. I have to support the people who are brave enough to organise this. We must keep going till they at least clean up the electoral roll.”

What drove me personally to be there? Education! My fear that the children of Malaysia will not be able to meet global standards in the near future.

Would they be the maids in Indonesia and Cambodia in the next 10 to 15 years?

But why join Bersih? They are non-partisan and we have to start with being non-political to bring about the necessary changes, which must be made now.