Much has been told and said about the police's rough treatment of Bersih 2.0 leaders at KL Sentral.

Though it appears that a potential rally from KL Sentral fizzled out with their arrest, the fact is one did manage to start from KL Sentral, and was among the very few groups to reach the Merdeka Stadium area that day.

NONE Thanks to the constant Twitter and Facebook feeds, people in KL Sentral were never disconnected from the on-goings in downtown KL.

There was a sense of restlessness in the air and despite the development around KL, people were staying put.

Closer to 2pm, the surau area at Level 2,  was already packed with prayer congregants quickly becaming the focal point of many.

Small groups began to converge and strangers started engaging in small talk amidst the light police presence.

The key figure in this event was former PAS national youth chief Abu Bakar Chik whose presence was spotted by several people in the crowd.

 Unintended gift from govt

NONE And before you could say Jack Robinson, he became the rallying point for a sizeable crowd which he led down to the LCCT bus station area.

They were met by Hasanudin Salim, the PAS' Kerdau by-election candidate, together with his entourage who had just arrived from a monorail ride.

Forced by the closure of the Maharajalela monorail station, and encouraged by the heavy downpour, the group began to take to the streets.

Onlookers in the Brickfields area swiftly joined in, transforming the group into a multiracial crowd that easily topped 2,000, enough to attract the attention of the hovering police helicopter.

NONE Meanwhile, Bersih 2.0 leaders taking refuge in Hilton KL Sentral were trying to build a different scenario.

Realizing that the stated objective of the day to deliver their memorandum to the palace could no longer be achieved, they choreographed a delicate strategy.

To counter the blocking of social media feeds thus disconnecting the public eager to know their whereabouts, they decided on a press conference in a bid to draw the attention of the international press to their location so that their moment of their arrest a little later would win the widest possible coverage.

Avoiding possible violent conflict

NONE It was a wise decision on their part. Should the public learn of Bersih chief S Ambiga, PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim and PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang's location, an absolutely huge crowd would definitely rally behind them, thus raising the stakes for a possible violent confrontation with the police, especially when we found out that the force had been instructed to employ aggressive methods to handle the situation.

One could only imagine what could have happened if the crowd at Level 2 KL Sentral had waited a bit longer for the Bersih leaders to emerge! As for the press, they certainly had a field day!

At the time of their arrest, the breakaway rally from KL Sentral had already reached Bulatan Merdeka, strangely without any problem.

Their progress was abruptly halted by the barbed wire barricade at the entrance of Jalan Stadium, manned by what appeared to be a small contingent of police from  the Jalan Tun HS Lee police station.

While the barbed wire halted  the march, it also made it difficult for the police to act against the crowd as well.

An FRU water cannon truck arrived 20 minutes later, firing a blast at the crowd, perhaps attempting  to provoke them but the people were not agitated.

NONE Several attempts at negotiations for the crowd to pass through failed.

As the rain stopped at around 3pm, the rally became even more eventful. Harris Ibrahim of MCLM was spotted among the crowd.

National laureate A Samad Said also turned up after the failed attempt to reach the palace.

(A picture in the newspapers the next day would show that the two were among Bersih 2.0 leaders at Hilton so they must have escaped police attention).

PAS vice president Husam Musa showed up much later. And soon after his arrival, the huge mass of people from Jalan Sultan-Petaling Street began to flow into Jalan Maharajalela. 

Most probably, the crowd had swelled beyond 10,000 at this stage. 

And keeping true to the script, at 4pm, at the urging of rally leaders, the crowd began returning to Petaling Street before dispersing peacefully.

bersih rally petaling street 090711 Events leading to the rally seemed to suggest a possible showdown among political parties and the police – a confrontation between groups of colours; yellow, red and blue that manifest their respective civil, selfish interest. 

However, with the Patriot rally faltering in the rain and Perkasa chickening out much earlier, the showdown looked set to take place  between Bersih and the state’s enforcers.

But two things may have subtly changed the dynamics of the situation that day.

First, the lack of leaders and marshals particularly PAS’s scout Unit Amal that usually helps maintain crowd discipline in their maroon-coloured vests.

Their absence was filled by the faces of the common people and youths who had become much more visible as the emerging leaders of the rally.

NONE Secondly, the  police ban on Bersih and yellow shirts which ironically brought to the fore the true image of the rakyat , a huge crowd of people of different colours at one end, facing-off the police in their blue uniform with batons in their hands at the other.

Such images helped shape the growing perception that the July 9 rally was no longer a clash between politicians and their coloured egos but a statement of rakyat's defiance in the face of government’s irresponsible lock down.

And since politics is all about perception, as per the PM Najib Abdul Razak last June, the Bersih rally has quickly become a perception trap of sorts for this government.

It would be interesting to see how the administration maneuvers itself out of this trap as the images of the rakyat protest become more widespread and critical voices from the United States to the United Nations now lend credibility to the legitimacy of this once illegitimate rally.

Related stories:

The standoff at Puduraya and Tung Shin hospital

Bersih 2.0: Arrested and sent to Pulapol

My march for the real one Malaysia

'Dataran Maybank has become my Tahrir Square'

Merdeka when I was six, true democracy at 60?

 

This series relates eyewitness accounts of the Bersih July 9 rally in Kuala Lumpur for clean and fair elections. If you were there and have an interesting story to share, email us at editor@malaysiakini.com