BERSIH 3.0: A DAY I WOULD NEVER FORGET

THE DAYS BEFORE

The days leading to Bersih 3.0 on 28 April 2012 was filled with a lot of uncertainties and fear. Where to meet? What time to take off? Best route? What to bring? Transportation? Who’s coming? What to wear? Apart from all of the uncertainties, I was a little pre-occupied with fear on the prospect of being tear gas, chased by FRU and of course arrest. I had to continually comfort myself on the reason I am going and because of these reason, I needed to put my fears aside and think about the bigger picture and that it’s no more about my, myself and I but about being a Malaysian. As a Malaysian, I am standing up demanding that my right for a clean and fair election is respected. Don’t hoodwinked me into telling me to express my views in the ballot box when the ballot box is so tainted. And so I went…

THE DAY

On Friday night, a couple of us decided to overnight at a friends place which was near the Kelana Jaya LRT line. Needless to say, with all the anticipation, excitement and fear, I didn’t get to sleep much. But I was very encourage when I read the news that 3,000 people were already at Dataran Merdeka camping out. That was just crazy… the motivation for someone to actually decide to sleep it out at Dataran for more than 12 hours before the rally is very hard to comprehend. It just goes to show the deep desire in people to see fairness and change.

We took off at 9am to make our way to Kelan Jaya station. Already we were receiving news that the train station was close, cops all around etc… But when we got there, the train station was not close but the frequency of the trains were reduced significantly.. every 15 minutes one… and there were a couple of cops around minding their own business. We could see streams of people coming into the LRT station all dressed in their Bersih 3.0 t-shirt showing no fear at all. Train of course was pack but that was alright. We all understood our purpose and was very accommodating and even helping crowd management in the train by people giving instruction to make way and come in further to make space.

When we arrive at Pasar Seni, we knew for good that we were not a splinter group anymore but were in the midst of a sea of people all with the same goal and objective. I didn’t know here that I would be underestimating the actual turn out of the crowd. There were already a big group of people gathered at Petaling Street. We had a heavy lunch, chilled around Central Market where people continually made their way there, and before long, the whole area at Pasar Seni/Central Market was packed with people. There were on and off people shouting BERSIH! BERSIH! HIDUP RAKYAT! HIDUP RAKYAT! Apart from the huge turn out of the crowd, it was nice to see our MPs also standing together with us. Met Rafizi, Chua Jui Meng, Ambiga, Nizar, Nga Kor Ming and Sivakumar.

Looking around me, it was a real eye opener. We always thought that the Malays and Indians were the only ones who had the balls to stand up for what is right and we Chinese were always in the background gossiping about the matter. But these time around, there were loads of Chinese people. We literally made up 50% or more of the crowd. It was really encouraging to see people coming to the realization that sitting at home and not doing anything more is no more a solution. We needed to take the responsibility as citizens of Malaysia to fight for our right to be a Malaysian. Gone were the days when we rested in our laurels and let other people do the fight. We are today, all Malaysian fighters. Apart from that, another significant sight was the college young and aunty uncle old were all part of the crowd. When I say college young, these were like innocent looking 18 year olds who you wouldn’t have thought that they will have any interest in this. The owner of the huge yellow beach ball that we were all bouncing it around belonged to 3 very young cute looking Chinese girls who took the effort to bring the ball and lighten up the mood. Who would have guessed? And when I say uncle and aunties, these weren’t only the educated English specking uncle and aunty but the Cina Cina type who in the past wouldn’t risk anything that would affect their livelihood. Never would I have expected all these people to be there. Of course the entire group was made out of the various races of Malaysia standing side by side. I am only highlighting on the Chinese involvement as I never expected to see so much involvement from my own race. But today, we stood together not as a Chinese fighting for his/her right, today we stood together to fight for the rights of a Malaysian. 1 Malaysia in practice and not just lip service.

At about 1:30pm, after Ambiga’s speech, we began walking. The entire crowd was in a party mood where we sang songs, someone had a guitar and  harmonica and was playing all the way, someone had a kompang, and someone had a placard that said, “KUNING, KUNING, NAJIB PENING”. Slowly we made our way, nobody shoving, all walked like the civilize Malaysian we all are. There were even Bersih volunteers holding black plastic bag collecting rubbish from the crowd, and one of them went, “SAMPAH SINI! SAMPAH SINI! MCA PUN SINI!”

Not too long after, we arrive at the Masjid Jamek main road. All 7 of us being first timers, we decided to play it a little safe and were quite a distance away from Dataran. We were somewhere around HSBC. But being in the middle was also pretty awesome. Looking at the direction of Pudu Raya, we could not see an end to the crowd. There were just a sea of people and my earlier quoted “sea” was now only a “pei si” (nose shit) now. The crowd was not only along the main road but were also at all the roads leading towards the main road. People were just standing everywhere and it was a true sight to behold and an amazing experience to be with my fellow Malaysians of all race and colors.

As the rally were all stationary as we could go no further to Dataran, we decided to do a walkabout to chill from the sun. We join the crowd again when we saw them moving but not too long after that, we saw smoke coming out of Dataran and we knew… itu bukan asap kereta… calmly we began moving in the opposite direction, slip into some alley mamak and use the parallel road towards pudu raya. There we stood for a couple of minutes waiting to see what would happen. By then, I already got a text msg from my wife and father that Ambiga had declared the rally a success and has requested for all to disperse (for some reason, data plan was not accessible the whole time). We decided then to proceed to Nandos for a meal and call it a day. We did great!

It was at Nandos that we witnessed more Malaysians running towards Pudu Raya and we knew the the chaos has begun. Even though we could not see any tear gas smoke or the FRUs were no where close, we began to have slight runny nose and an employee who was smoking outside came in with tears in her eyes. Note to self – tear gas is really not funny. At about 5pm, we decided to make our way back to Pasar Seni to take the train back.

You would have expected the action to have all ended by now.

As we were walking back to Pasar Seni, there were about 3 FRU man standing in the middle of the road at the Pasar Seni intersection. Not wanting to risk getting arrested, we decided to take the Petaling Street road and come back out at the other end of Pasar Seni. Note – there were only a small group of people hanging around here - about 10-20 people. Slightly passing the net intersection, the FRU suddenly fired tear gas! We just started walking faster and faster away from the tear gas and the traders started closing their shops. This was totally uncalled for. There you freaking ask us to disperse and there you morons are blocking all exits (Plaza Rakyat, Masjid Jamek, Pasar Seni). How do you expect us to go back? In your PDRM lorry?

Anyways, thanks to a previous treasure hunt I attended, I knew my way around Petaling Street and we walked down to Maharajalela – took the monorail to KL Sentral and then a Putra back.

Of course we were all dead tired by the end of the day but we were glad we were part of history today and that we might only be a few, but the few that made the decision to attend made up the 300,000 on that day.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1.       Chinese people are no more side-liners. They don’t just attend the rally. They attended the rally with big yellow beach ball, 2 super huge floating rocket with “BERSIH” and “ANTI-LYNAS” marked on them and big bright banners. And they stood together as Malaysians with the people of all other race and age as ONE.

2.       People who attended are no more minorities. People who didn’t attend are the new minorities. I had friends from all walks of life attending the rally. Some I never thought would even have an interest in politics. I was wrong.

3.       In the corporate world, the stereotype of equating attendance in a rally to potential dismissal is broken. I knew of an ex-collegue who is the Head of Operations (a SVP/GM) who proudly wore his Bersih shirt and rallied on that day. I also know of other colleagues who were always comfortable with how life is taking their first step in actively fighting for fairness.

4.       The young adults have awaken (I am also a young adult k…). A huge majority of the people that attended were of the younger generation.

5.       The senior citizens who you expect to be like the Ent from Lord of the Ring have arisen and are demanding that they too are heard.

6.       BN’s 1Malaysia is nothing like Bersih’s 1Malaysia.

7.       There is no such thing as hate among the races. There’s only mainstream media mis-reporting and government lies.

8.       Businesses don’t loose money on that day. All restaurant opened on that day were booming with business. We had to line up and wait for food. There were some that even just ta pau and ate at the side walk.

9.       When the PDRM/FRU ask you to disperse, they don’t really mean it cause they shut down all form of transportation so you can’t really go anywhere. What they really mean is, “We’ve brought stocks of tear gas, chemical laced water, trucks and handcuffs and we ain’t bringing back those stock ”.  

10.   Getting tear gas is not funny. Avoid at all cost. I got the slightest amount of gas – the very very very bare minimal and was already sniffing. I cannot imagine if one was to land in front of me.

SPECIAL NOTE:

1.       To the protestors who threw things at the police vehicle/breach the barricade – WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

2.       To the PDRM/FRU who assaulted and beat up the protestors and media representatives – YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.

3.       To the PROVOCATEURS – YOU ARE THE TRUE PIECE OF SHIT OF THE DAY AND THE GATES OF HELL WARMLY WELCOMES YOU.

VIDEO & PHOTO ON THE DAY

VIDEO HERE

PHOTOS: