COMMENT Even if PKR’s Zaid Ibrahim does not win today’s parliamentary by-election in Hulu Selangor, Pakatan Rakyat’s new politics of national salvation has triumphed over BN’s old politics of the 3M’s - money, machinery and media.

The evidence for that was the massive crowd that gathered at the Kuala Kubu Bharu Stadium last night for Pakatan’s final wind-up rally: it was estimated by some up to 30,000 strong, with a considerable proportion from outside the vicinity of the constituency, composed of all races and well behaved, ranging in age from young to old, disciplined in the way they parked their vehicles, readily obedient to the emcee’s instructions to keep order, and lapping up the oratorical fare with brio.

Ceramah Perdana at Stadium Mini Kuala Kubu Baru by Anwar 240410 How does the size of a crowd at a political rally and its deportment – from how it parks its vehicles to the way it files into the venue and departs from it – tell of its psyche and future behaviour?

It tells in the way it quietly but powerfully reflected the unforced solidarity of thousands of hearts, willing – admittedly, this is an illicit jump from empirical fact to arbitrary conclusion – the triumph of the new politics over the old.

It showed in the way the crowd spontaneously looked up at what was certainly a police helicopter that made a reconnoitering sortie high over the stadium and how people chuckled when speaker Karpal Singh of the DAP cracked, “That’s Rosmah (wife of Prime Minister Najib Razak).”

Karpal’s barb didn’t sound like a cheap shot.

Inducements offered to voters

The campaign for the vacant seat sharply contrasted the styles of the new politics versus the old.

Zaid represented the politics of issues of national resonance; P Kamalanathan was a courtier - fresh faced, no doubt - plucked from BN’s rent-a-crowd ranks.

Zaid had no inducements to offer voters but that of his past - and sacrificed-for - stances on issues of national importance like abuse of power and corruption and a credible promise to push the agenda of reform in Parliament.

azlan Kamalanathan faithfully mimed the lines from a script ghost written for him. All his attempts to sound original only served to produce the effect that he was an echo.

Kamalanathan had the BN machinery that shamefacedly appropriates government machinery for its use, propping up his campaign.

Zaid declined to respond in like manner to the personal attacks on his rectitude; though Kamalanathan declined to join in those attacks, he failed to take the one opportunity he had to sound as fresh as he looked - which was to lament those attacks.

Zaid had enough in his bearing to win the rousing support of that barometer of national virtue, PAS icon Nik Aziz Nik Mat; Kamalanathan succeeded in drawing the support of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who built up Malaysia physically but emasculated its institutions.

If by the end of today’s counting of the votes, Zaid winds up in deficit, he could have looked out to last night’s teeming crowd and seen in it the mirror of a future of affirmation for Pakatan’s new politics of national rejuvenation through reform.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.