COMMENT | Democracy is noisy, but social media is noisier. By almost any measure, one would think Malaysia is in perpetual crisis and even perceived to be a failed state if social media were the only lens through which we see the country.

Scroll through the endless stream of posts, comments and viral videos, and the picture painted is bleak: political, racial, and religious chaos and a nation supposedly on the brink of decline.

It is a narrative repeated so often that many begin to accept it as truth. The campaign has become more aggressive because the political actors believe a general election is looming.

But away from the noise of the digital echo chamber, the country today enjoys a high degree of political stability that has been missing in recent years.

People have always taken political stability for granted. We have forgotten that we lost...