Damned if you do, damned if you don’t

It’s been an eventful week for Malaysia, to put it mildly. We saw a Cabinet reshuffle, the dropping of a few vocal critics of the prime minister from the Cabinet. We saw the rather unceremonious removal of the deputy prime minister, only the second time in recent history where a sitting deputy PM has been removed abruptly in the middle of his term.

We saw the removal of key civil servants from office, including no less than the Attorney-General himself, replaced by a second Umno-related personality in recent years to be promoted in the local legal scene, after Tun Zaki Azmi’s appointment as Chief Justice in 2008.

We saw investigation papers opened rapidly in quick succession on prominent personalities and senior civil servants, with rumours abound that the list would include the head of Bank Negara and the recently dropped deputy prime minister himself.

We then heard threats of repercussions, theories and allegations of why all these people were dropped, weak attempts to deny those theories and even weaker attempts to assure Malaysians that everything is normal and calm in the country.

The new Cabinet’s priority appeared to be to put a swift and clean end to months-long speculation and unwelcome "noise" about 1MDB, but not quite in the way many Malaysians had expected – actual logical, believable answers and if indeed there was misuse of public funds, for those responsible for it to be held accountable, at least in the very limited, constrained context that accountability can safely be demanded of in this part of the world.

It takes just a basic functional brain and a loosely tuned moral compass to tell you something isn’t quite right with the way this has been handled.

You can put it down to strange coincidences, bad timing or poor communication on the part of the government, but if the public postings on both the PM and former DPM’s social media pages are any yardstick to measure public opinion by, it appears the government have failed to address the questions being asked.

These actions also are worrying as they start a trend where those entrusted to uphold transparency will have to take into account if their actions can be perceived as "plotting to overthrow the government", though what and how this works isn’t quite clear yet.

Add this to the erratic and seemingly contradictory statements by the "new" administration, whereby the PM doesn’t want "yes" men, and yet, he would like his supporters to be "more like the Opposition" in standing behind their leader.

Malaysia hired American auditors and PR firms, yet in a speech, it was reported that he doesn’t like "white people" interfering in Malaysian affairs.

I guess it’s fortunate that US president Barack Obama is black, or TPPA would likely fail, but I digress.

With this failure of meeting public expectation, public anger isn’t something that should be entirely unexpected.

Which of course, naturally leads to calls for reform and protests in forms civil Malaysia have come to warm up to. Bersih is one of the larger movements that have gained traction in this front, and have called for Malaysians to join the next walk, planned in three weeks’ time.

The first and second Bersihs largely changed the way Malaysian thought about street demonstrations and forced the government to view them more than just a group of angry dissidents with too much time on their hands.

Bersih is not without its detractors. The most common complaints are that Bersih is an opposition/foreign tool to destabilise the government, that it is disruptive to business and that they are biased.

Personally, I feel the first and second reasons are quite weak. If a street demonstration organised almost entirely by word of mouth and social media is able to overthrow a government with full control of the military, police and government machinery, then perhaps it’s not such a stable government to begin with.

And if Bersih is to be frowned upon for road closures, than perhaps we should not have marathons and parades in the city either. But the third argument is something increasingly seen, even among participants of previous Bersih gatherings.Perhaps they are just fed up of it all.

Perhaps Bersih should have been more vocal during the Kajang move. Perhaps they should not have been seen as too "close" to the opposition.

Perhaps these people would be more convinced of its claimed political neutrality should they have taken another step back from the political scene and stuck to fair and free elections and not talk about 1MDB.

But fair and free elections are just one of the demands of Bersih. Arguably also, the biggest issue people seem to have with 1MDB is its alleged connection to politics and politicians.

Perhaps something will come out of another walk by Malaysians in the city, perhaps staying overnight may change the outcome of this one.

Malaysians who support the cause will come out for it and people who have lost faith in Bersih would stay at home. But differences in opinion in this matter should not hinder the desire of Malaysians for a better, cleaner, more transparent, less corrupt Malaysia.

You can give up on the government, on organisations and on people. But you shouldn’t give up the fight to make this a better country. So come out and walk, or stay at home. But don’t get in each other’s way of doing either. Walk or not, we have to keep moving. – August 4, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.