As optimistic as I usually am that Malaysia will someday be free of the burden and blight of the Umno/BN regime, I sometimes get discouraged. But then something happens to rekindle my faith that freedom can prevail in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

Today, for example, my spirits are lifted by BBC TV coverage of celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Who'd have dreamed, just the day before Nov 9, 1989, that such a key sector of the iron curtain would ever crumble, let alone so suddenly?