The tensile strength of the Pakatan Rakyat coalition in the face of relentless attacks by the Umno-led Barisan Nasional to break it up makes the second anniversary of the political tsunami that hit Malaysia two years ago an occasion of momentous importance.  

Nobody who has watched the steady deterioration of the BN over the last 12 years, at least, can have any doubt that one of the finer truisms of governance in the last century and a half of the history of the nation-state belonged to Lord Acton, to wit, “Power tends to corrupt; absolutely power corrupts absolutely.”

The Umno-dominated BN, corrupted by too long an incumbency, is in irreversible decline; their decision to supplant the ineffectual Abdullah Ahmad Badawi with the more capable but highly-tainted Najib Razak 13 months after their electoral buffeting...