OCTOBER 17 — Utusan Malaysia and those dutiful Umno ministers continue with their inane chorus that Bersih “should not try to overthrow a democratically elected government by street rallies”.

That is, by popular protest action on the nation’s streets, meaning in its most recognisable public spaces and emblematic places.

If they think they have the numbers, popular support — so these Umno political “philosophers” and mouthpieces chant — then Bersih should use the ballot, have recourse alone to the mechanism of elections, the EC-run electoral system, to change the government.

Yet, what is the Bersih complaint, its signature claim and cause?

They — together with many more people who are not Bersih “groupies” — hold that the Malaysian electoral system is, by now, hopelessly broken and totally rotten.

So the Umno and Utusan “advice” unfailingly proffered to Bersih to have recourse solely to, and to place their entire trust in, EC-run elections is either spectacularly obtuse or else an exercise in rank “bad faith”.

And further, of course, if, as so many believe, the existing election system in its present form is irremediably broken and rotten, then the ruling power that it throws up and installs arguably lacks genuine popular legitimacy and so cannot properly be called ‘democratically elected”.

The urging to “go instead to the elections system” is a fine example of self-negating circularity.

Does anyone still remember the old kids” song There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Eliza?

The bucket needs to be fixed.

How?

One by one all the required steps are outlined and the necessary resources for repair identified.

Then just one thing more is needed to get the job done.

Water!

How to get it?

“Use your bucket.”

But I can't.

Why not?

Back to the beginning where the song started, its opening complaint and plea: “There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Eliza”.

Umno, Utusan and the EC are the “Elizas” — the great Eliza obstacles and the disabling Eliza conundrum, the vitiating circularity — of the Malaysian political situation.  

* Clive Kessler is Emeritus Professor of Socioloy & Anthropology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.