Political tsunami

My first political commentary on my blog but I won’t turn this into a 101 Dalil Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Menjadi PM wtf. Not that I’m very in verse with politics anyway.

Riding the wave of this ‘political tsunami’, as the media likes to call the outcome of our General Election, has never been more exciting. The unexpected happened – 5 states captured by the Opposition as never happened before in history. It’s exciting times when you’re living through what will be immortalised in historical texts decades down the road, perhaps in a short paragraph squeezed in somewhere with the headline: 8th March 2008 – BN suffered largest setback since Merdeka, 5 states fell to Opposition.

I went out with Ding yesterday at about 11.30pm and met up with Shawn and Andy at the USJ 8 satay stall, then went to Shawn’s house to do our Japanese homework and watch a few random movies and of course, the election news.

As soon as I reached home at nearly 3.20am, I checked on Malaysiakini again and then and there, my head was reeling from the news that my state of Selangor had been captured by the Opposition. A very unexpected turn of events – hopefully this means a total reform and a makeover of local councils to a less corrupted one; remember that useless Millennium Park with that golden bird that cost RM1 million to build but was then left to rot anyway?

So what does this mean, now that the Opposition has won such a huge never-seen before victory? Would our country fall into an unprecedented gloom, like some cynics have supposed? Would our country emerge and triumph over injustices and blatant corruption plaguing our government officials?

No one knows for sure. So much so that, words of caution flew very fast that relatives have been calling and asking us not to go out for fear of being caught in rusuhans wtf. And finishing my Japanese class today, I was very shocked to see the roads so empty for the first time on a non-festival day. Shawn was saying that he was taken aback by how easily he could get a parking space in Taipan earlier today. And Jess’ mum was apparently stocking up on food? lol.

The next few days and the oncoming weeks are surely unpredictable when new state governments would be formed and new Menteri Besars and Chief Ministers would be named. And what BN has to say about their loss. And would Badawi be pressured to step down?

While some people are rejoicing over the Opposition’s victory, as a cautious Opposition supporter, I really could not imagine what would transpire next seeing that the only states that part of the Opposition (namely PAS) had managed to capture were Kelantan and Terengganu in the past.. and suffice to say, I disagree with how things were being run there – gender segregation, archaic rules being used, etc.

We’ve yet to see DAP and PKR’s track record in forming a State government, although I have tremendous faith in DAP (probably a little biased as well seeing that I’m Chinese.. but that’s not important). It would be interesting to see how the PAS-PKR-DAP coalition can work together in the newly-captured states, whether DAP/PKR would object against PAS’ infamous conservative policies (and sometimes downright ridiculous) and how strong and united the coalition is would soon be seen.

I’m strangely optimistic – Malaysia has entered into a new unseen era.