Malaysia Decides - Tsunami of Change

The "rakyat" has spoken. I am shocked but really proud to be in a democratic country yesterday. The 12th election just saw a tsunami of shock defeats and a wave of change sweeping across the nation, with heavy casualties amongst top politicians, handing over the coalition its worst performance since our independence.

As predicted in the last blog, the winds of change, coupled with a long list of undeniable dissatisfaction points of the existing government had brought huge wins for the opposition, and to my surprise, the coalition lost the 2/3 majority although maintained a simple majority.

The tsunami effect had been totally unexpected even by the politicians themselves. The people carried the sentiment of problems and voted out many incumbents instead choosing for the opposition, sending a strong message to the government for a need for change.

Selangor, my home state, and Kuala Lumpur where I work, will be ruled by opposition.

A PAS MB (Chief Minister) will rule Kelantan and Kedah, whilst Keadilan MB will rule Selangor and DAP MB will rule Penang.

We will have a bunch of lesser experienced, young, enthusiastic, parlimentarians in the opposition party, whose consensus needs to be agreed to change the constitution.

We will have three strong opposition parties in the parliament.

Meanwhile, the Barisan Nasional alliance will be required to do serious soul searching on the brand of race based politics and examine the need for stronger leadership across the various component parties.

What does the future brings after the tsunami has cleared and everybody realises they need to get back to their regular life?

The optimist in me sees that the Barisan Nasional team needs to examine itself closely, because they need to do a thorough post-mortem, understand the real reasons for the dissent, give up self denial, cut off the cancerous bits, bring in fresh blood, transparency and socio-economic progress for all, and reinvent themselves - because they can only get better in the next 2013 elections. Be man enough to accept defeat and rebuild for the future. Whilst the opposition will be stronger after given a chance, they could also be weaker if they are not effective.

The people have spoken, have you heard them?

Now... get to work please, all you Yang Berhormats...