COMMENT It’s an experience to be back in the minority. It reminds me of when I first joined PKR, around 2007, when the party had just the one seat in Parliament. Nobody listened to us much then, but we wrote what we thought anyway.

I harbour no illusions that I am leading some sort of quest that will lead to the downfall of any individual or party, or change the course of events.

If nothing changes, Anwar Ibrahim will almost certainly become state assemblyman for Kajang in a little over a month - that’s for the people of Kajang to decide. There is every possibility that he will be Selangor menteri besar soon after - that’s for a rather more complicated set of people to decide. I am not among them.

Just as in 2007, the likelihood of successfully changing things is not the only thing that makes us speak out. Whatever we thought of our odds, we kept on trying to tell the truth - to call things as we see them.

I think in this regard, PKR strategy director Rafizi Ramli also taught us a great deal. Even though there was little to no chance that Wanita Umno chief Shahrizat Abdul Jalil would be prosecuted for corruption, or that the money siphoned out through the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) would be returned, Rafizi pressed on.

He taught us, via admirable example, the merits of persistent tenacity in the pursuit of exposing injustice, and his relentlessness put me in mind of a small animal that bites you hard and just refuses to let go, no matter how vigorously you try to shake it off. We can only hope to be half as dedicated.

This article is a brief follow up to Anwar’s responses on questions regarding Selangor’s water industry. On a related note, it will also briefly comment on the nature of political discourse in Malaysia...