The euphoria following last weekend’s People’s Tsunami has settled down, along with the fading away of various rumours and fears about post-election street unrest. Now it’s time for Malaysians to come back down to Earth and take stock.

This is indeed, as Anwar Ibrahim said, "a defining moment" in our history. I would also personally call this the Tipping Point for the way Malaysian politics will be conducted from now on.

The Opposition’s Barisan Rakyat (BR) went far beyond expectations despite clear instances of the Election Commission’s complicity with the Barisan Nasional (BN) with their alleged gerrymandering, doubled-up postal votes, lack of voting privacy for voters in the armed forces, phantom voter lists and its spurious last-minute flip-flop on the use of indelible ink. It would not be a stretch to say, if an EC-BN conspiracy is indeed present, it would have needed at least 55% of all fairly-cast votes to signal this kind of rejection for the BN.

But make no mistake about it. Clearly, beyond the BN and its hardcore supporters, not everybody is happy with this election’s outcome. Foreign fund managers, perhaps ignorant of the fact that this election result is what truly makes most Malaysians happy, are watching us nervously right now. The KLSE with its natural aversion for the unexpected is also behaving true to nature, taking a dive until institutional investors can see some assurance of business-as-usual.

With politics being the way it is here, we can expect the incumbent Umno-dominated Federal Government to be already hatching a plot to ensure the Barisan Rakyat (BR) state governments fail to deliver on their promises to their electorates. Here, the BN has at its disposal its legacy civil service institutions, the police, the judiciary, various other governmental levers of power and a compliant mass-media that it has already co-opted.

We can expect the BR’s State Governments to have their hands tied in many instances where they need Federal funding, approvals or legislative support to implement their promises of social justice, fairness, personal safety and controlled inflation for their constituencies. And we can expect to see news of such ‘failures’ placed in full view of the public over the next four years by the mass media too.

But at the same time, this is also an unprecedented time of opportunity for the BR in at least three ways.

Firstly, for the first time ever, the BR now actually has the chance to demonstrate its hitherto- unknown ability as an alternative national government to the BN. If the BR can adequately run the economic powerhouse constituencies of Penang, Selangor, FT and Perak in a coherent manner that reflects its election manifesto of "Fairness to All", it would be in an even better position to wrest the simple majority in Parliament from the BN in the next General Elections. All this is notwithstanding probable efforts by the federal government to smear egg on the BR’s face.

Corollary to this, the next four years would also be Anwar Ibrahim’s one-and-only opportunity to prove he is the most viable alternative Prime Minister for Malaysia. There are still a lot of lingering doubts about this man, and I do not blame the doubters. Even with the sodomy charges against him being quashed, he did do a lot of very bad things when he was part of the system back then.

For those of us with longer memories, Anwar Ibrahim was probably a beneficiary of Umno money politics too. He was certainly also shoulder-to-shoulder with Najib, who proverbially "waved the keris" at the Chinese during the Umno-MCA standoff prior to Operation Lallang 1987.

The onus is still upon him to assure every doubtful Malaysian that he is indeed a changed man, especially after his time in prison at the receiving end of police abuse and an ISA he once condoned and used.

Secondly, there already are rumblings of an impending bout of head-chopping within the BN, especially Umno. Incumbent PM Pak Lah’s head is expected to be the first to roll, along with those of his rapacious Fourth Floor advisors including Khairy Jamaludin, notwithstanding his hard-fought victory at Rembau over a PKR first-timer.

Normally, such blood-letting should lead to a stronger party with a more publicly-acceptable generation of leaders taking over, but things are not that simple for Umno right now.

Pak Lah’s successor Najib is equally tainted with the same kind of allegations that caused the BN’s downfall: corruption, nepotism and cronyism. With the shadow of Altantuya’s murder overhanging, to boot. Other post-election survivors in the Umno Supreme Council who are expected to retain their ministerial positions are the same faces behind the AP scandal, keris-waving, etc. too. Indeed, this underlines the crux of Dr Mahathir’s assertion that positive change in Umno can no longer come from within. In short, in the next elections the BR will be up against basically the same Umno, albeit minus a few big guns.

The people know that too.

So, if the BR cements its credibility and doesn’t drop the ball over the next four years, it could be in the position to form the next Government of Malaysia after the 13th General Elections.

Thirdly, this Tipping Point I mentioned earlier has to do with the way Malaysia voted in this election. For the first time in our 50-year history, Malaysians voted on the issues at hand AND party ideals in a colour-blind fashion almost across the board. At Batu Caves, the predominantly Indian electorate rejected BN’s T Mohan in favour of PKR’s Amirudin Shari. Many Chinese in Penang actually cheered when news of PAS’s victory in Kelantan were announced. For the first time in history too, an unusual number of working-class Malays were actually in live or online contact with non-Malay friends tracking, sharing, and then celebrating election results in the same constituencies. For the first time ever also, a ‘rainbow coalition’ of prominent bloggers had actually gone on a campaign trail in support of the BR, addressing rapt multiracial audiences wherever they went.

Now that a Malay resident at Kampung Baru can see he actually hasn’t that much to fear from a Chinese kopi tiam owner at Mount Erskine or Hindraf itself, his voting behaviour in the 12th General Elections has shaken the foundations of race-hued mental blocks that the BN had long nurtured and exploited to its advantage. This development helped compensate for the race-based gerrymandering that the Election Commission executed for that purpose.

For this phenomenon, we can thank both the BN Government for providing the Opposition with such a plethora of election issues that struck a chord in all Malaysians and Anwar Ibrahim for effectively brokering this historic multi-ethnic and multi-religious Opposition alliance.

The People’s Tsunami rode on a wave of public indignation and hope for the future, fuelled by BR’s promise of justice for all, eradication of corruption, and proper economic management that translates into more food on the table. ‘Makkal Sakhti’ and the rest, you already know.

Now what?

Like Peter Parker observed, "With great power comes great Responsibility." Malaysia is now watching what Anwar and his BR partners are going to do with this unprecedented mandate. After all, very few had expected, amidst all those fears of electoral fraud, that the BR could actually break the BN’s two-thirds majority in Parliament AND form the next government in five States.

Effectively, the BR state governments are now on the receiving end of the same public goodwill and high expectations that was placed upon Pak Lah in 2004.

But with one key exception. The BR, unlike the entrenched BN, is less likely to have the benefit of full cooperation from government agencies at the federal level or even the civil service within their own states. If we consider just the issue of corruption singly, the BR has its work for the next four years already cut out for it.

The local councils are allegedly, by public perception, even more corruption-ridden than the police have been accused of being in some places. Unless the BR state governments succeed in replacing tainted key officers within their territory or in encouraging a moral change of heart within their own local councils and administrations, there is very little the new-kids-on-the-block can do to alleviate the public’s tribulations in this matter over the short-term.

A potentially-uncooperative civil service or local council administration, with possibly a disproportionately large share of pro-Umno staff in its ranks, would - if it so wishes - also be well-placed to throw a spanner into any well-intentioned programme a BR state government may attempt for the electorate.

And of course, any continued incompetence, corruption or unfairness by these elements will invariably also now be blamed on the new state governments by a public with heightened expectations.

All this assumes, of course, that the new BR state governments are indeed sincere in running their states solely for the benefit of the people. Any perceived signs of impropriety in Opposition states are now more likely to be quickly picked up and given a pro-BN slant by the mainstream media, assuming our newspapers will be what they are now.

The challenge for Malaysian democracy is therefore threefold.

Firstly, the BR needs to ensure that their state councillors are indeed singly committed to serving the people without any expectation of filthy lucre. Only then can they hope to survive past one term under the scrutiny of an electorate that has now signalled its intolerance for business-as- usual-corruption even if it’s by an Opposition elected by them.

Secondly, the BR state governments have to work doubly hard in the areas of competence and credibility to make a difference for their voters in the possible absence of fully-cooperative local councils, as well as the unwelcome attention a hostile federal government. In this respect, some expertise-sharing will be essential among the BR partner parties, especially on how PAS manages to keep Kelantan running all these years while being left on the shelf by the federal government.

Thirdly, voters in the Opposition states must quickly appreciate the implications of their choice. They had voted for Change. They expect that change to be for the better. The problem is, with the ongoing presence of entrenched elements of the BN government in the state government apparatus in collusion with a hostile federal government, the positive change they voted for is not likely to come very soon to their states. Many of these expected changes may not even happen at a significant level during this term of office.

A slippery slope the BR is now on is that urban voters are known, in the past at least, to be far more tolerant of corruption than they are of administrative or inefficiencies by local governments, especially when those factors obstruct their ability to conduct business or live comfortably. Under the abovementioned constraints the BR state governments will face upon handover, the chance of under-performance in meeting voter expectations can be quite high.

Therefore, much tolerance, understanding and maturity will be demanded of Malaysians to weather the next four years of bread-and-butter politicking that is likely to come with this tug-and-war between the BR state and BN federal governments. We need to manage our expectations of the BR in the light of these circumstances.

The future of Malaysia’s democracy essentially now lies at the feet of the BR’s performance as the government of five states that are also the country’s key economic engines. This meteoric rise of the BR is symbolic of the nation’s hopes for a new way of running the country cleanly and fairly, without the ever-looming spectre of inter-ethnic riots whenever a corrupt government’s interests are threatened.

For this reason alone, the BN can be expected to work very hard to extinguish this nascent voter maturity that will eventually render ethnically-chauvinistic voting behaviour a shadow of what it has been for the past 50 years. Umno and its partners will want to demonstrate that their ‘divide- and-rule’ paradigm is what is most expedient for the voter, even if its working definition of Ketuanan Melayu is actually toxic for the future of the country.

The next four years will truly be a test of endurance for two players in Malaysia’s future. The first player, the Barisan Rakyat, has now found itself in a totally-unaccustomed role as government, but without very much power at this time to do what it needs to do for the people.

The second player in question is the now-awakened Malaysian voter, who will for sure be repeatedly faced with the temptation to backslide towards pre-2008 politics in exchange for goodies denied them by the federal government for daring to vote last weekend for the Opposition in their constituencies.

The ball’s now in your court, Malaysians and Barisan Rakyat. May God be with you. My cautious hopes and prayer certainly are.