FAC News - Tuesday, August 27, 2002 2:37 PM

The Reformasi Trail - Introduction

Reformasi - as far back as the 60s

My first "exposure" to Malaysian politics was when my father jubilantly announced the formation of Parti Gerakan. This came as a surprise for we had known him to be anti-politicians.

"The only good politician is a dead politician," he would always say.

Why such passion against politicians we never did find out. And it was surprising too considering he went to school with most of them. Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Dr Ismail, and many, many more were all my father’s contemporaries in the first batch of Malays who were sent to England immediately after the Second World War.

Maybe it was because he knew them so well that he had little regards for them. "After all," my mother confided in us, "They spent all the time together at the dog races."

"And they all had English girlfriends," added my mother with a wink in her eye, "Even the married ones."

"But most of them abandoned their girlfriends and came home," smiled my mother, "Except your Daddy of course, and three or four of his friends."

These friends of Daddy who married English wives were those like Tunku Yaacob, Razlan, and so on, all who died before my father - bizarrely many in car crashes.

"Gerakan is the first multi-racial party in Malaysia," my father excitedly told us. "This is the party of the future. This party will reform the country."

"Reform"? Yes, an interesting word. Reminds me of what happened in Japan many years ago and turned it into an imperialist power.

"Do you know this is the first party where Malays, Indians and Chinese are all equal? This is the future for Malaysia. The Alliance is no longer suitable."

The Alliance Party was the ruling coalition then, comprising of UMNO, MCA and MIC - predominantly Malay, Chinese and Indian parties respectively.

I was but a mere teenager. What do I know about such things? My father was definitely feeling on top of the world but I just did not see what there was to get so excited about.

Eventually Gerakan became just another Chinese party and my father’s hopes for the intellectual pioneers of the party to bring this country to great heights got dashed.

After that he never spoke about Gerakan again. And not long after my father died while still in his mid-40s.

My mother tried slogging it out for a few years without my father but eventually she got too homesick and decided to head back for England.

But I think it was more than just loneliness or homesickness that pricked her. The Vietnam War had just ended and Malaysia was being swamped with boat people. My mother has these visions of Malaysia becoming another domino in the Communist territorial expansion.

My mother's best friend from her younger days in England had married a Shan Prince from Burma. They went back to Burma around the time my father brought my mother to what was then Malaya.

The horror stories my mother read in those occasional letters she received from Burma frightened the daylights out of her. And then Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the Vietnamese are now on our doorstep.

"Let's go back to England," my mother tried to convince me. "In England I could even work."

"But you can work here in Malaysia," I insisted.

It was not work that was on my mother's mind and one day she told me what was really bugging her.

"Do you know what life is like in Burma?" she asked me. "Now Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam have also fallen. How long do you think it will be before Malaysia falls?"

"But Malaysia is our home," I pleaded. "I may have been born in England. But I will die here in Malaysia and be buried here. My father is buried here. My grandparents on my father's side are buried here. We all should be buried here in the family plot in Kelang. We all should remain in Malaysia."

"It's not the dying that I am worried about," said my mother. "It's the years I have left alive that I am concerned with. What kind of country do you think Malaysia is going to become? There will be no freedom. The government will arrest you anytime they feel like it. You go against the government and they will put you in jail. The police will beat you up. You will never be allowed to do or say whatever you like. You will be a prisoner in your own country. Malaysia will be like hell on earth."

"Oh don't exaggerate," I said. "The Communists will never occupy Malaysia. I don't think they can get past Thailand."

But my mother's mind was made up. She would go back to England and that was final. She tried one last time to convince me to follow her back home to "a civilised country where you are free to do and say what you like, where you will not be put in jail if they don’t like you, where the government will not brutalise you, where you don't have to go through the day scared out of your wits", and so on.

"Get out now while you have the chance," my mother said.

When it was clear I would not follow her, my mother left without me.

Many years came to pass. My mother died a few years later and was buried in England. The Vietnamese never came to occupy our land. All those bad things my mother said would happen did not happen.

Then, one day, to my horror, I realised my mother had been right all alone. Her prediction had come true though I may not initially have realised it. Well, they did say mother is always right.

We are not free to say or do whatever we like. We cannot assemble on the streets without getting arrested. The police can beat us up if they like. If we go against the government they put us in jail. We need a permit for everything we do. They can even rig our trial.

There was no invasion. No armies crossed our seas. It was just a slow deterioration of our freedom through the years.

And that realisation came in September 1998. And that realisation came through the birth of Reformasi.

Now I understand what my father saw in the future of Malaysia that he thought Gerakan could offer - reformation. Now I understand what made my mother leave the insanity of Malaysia behind her for the civilized home of her birth - freedom.

We were sleeping all these years. And while we slept our freedom was being stolen from us. We needed a wakeup call. And Reformasi was that wakeup call.

To Reformasi, that woke me up and brought realisation to me, I dedicate this album.