APRIL 24 — It is easy to slip into feelings of deja vu now that the old has become the new. A former prime minister has become the current prime minister and PKR has still not dropped its penchant for in-fighting.
What is new is Barisan Nasional now becoming a coalition of hecklers.
Where are your manifesto promises?
What are you going to do about the economy?
How do you explain the people’s support for Datuk Seri Najib Razak?
Precious. Very precious.
The good news really is that BN is doing what the Opposition is supposed to do and while irksome (to Pakatan), it’s just how the current political setup works.
Yet there is such a palpable feeling of disappointment, down from the euphoria immediately post-election.
It reminds me of the way US voters were after Barack Obama’s election.
What they failed to realise is that while a black man as US president is a big change, it does not change everything. It is just one step forward and that is what we Malaysians need to remember as well.
Pakatan really needs to be better at managing expectations but then that’s the folly of election promises — while Barisan could conveniently forget about said promises after winning, Pakatan does not have the luxury.
What Pakatan seems to forget is that they campaigned on a platform of hope — for a better Malaysia, for all.
Yet pork barrel politics as well as racial and religious sentiments are difficult to excise, not just from our politics but our society.
PKR is still a party of bickering drama queens in a never-ending and vicious game of musical chairs. PPBM is more Umno Baru than Malaysia Baharu. DAP remains consistently the favoured scapegoat for all the ills of Malay society.
We can change the government but changing the narrative? That is going to take more than a vote. It will take not just a sea change in voting trends but a societal overhaul.
Until we can persuade Malaysians that really, there is enough for everyone to share we will always have those who think only one race deserves all of the pie.
Pragmatism is the only real panacea we all have now; we can dream all we want but no dream is achieved overnight.
At least celebrate the small victories; that we can no longer jail people for making clown caricatures of the prime minister or for scaring him with balloons.
No matter how many steps backward we seem to be making right now, believe that we can just keep getting up and trying to take a step forward.
After all, every great hero’s journey is a tale filled not just with victory but setbacks. We’re still writing our story.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
