LETTER | This is a new dawn for Malaysia. After 61 years, the Malaysian people have a new political coalation in power. The BN coalition, previously the ruling government, is now the opposition. What a historic day May 9, 2018 will prove to be!

In my 51 years, I have always advocated the two-party system and have always advocated the importance of denying any ruling party a two-thirds majority in Parliament. With a two-thirds majority the constitution can be changed and this is surely a dangerous thing for one party to be able to do.

I never thought that I would see BN lose its two-thirds majority in my lifetime but it happened twice, once in 2008 and again in 2013. They also lost the popular vote in 2013. That always gave me hope that change was possible but I never expected to see the opposition win a general election. Not in my lifetime and never in my wildest dreams.

The opposition coalition that has swept into power is known as Harapan - Hope. And like me, I'm sure many of the rakyat have hope for change. While we were all quietly hopeful, I don’t think anyone ever dreamt how strong the waves of change would be. Certainly not me.

A total of 122 Parliamentary seats, way above the requisite 112 to form a simple majority federal government. Six states won by Harapan, two states by PAS and another two left as too close to call. BN only retained three states including Sarawak that had its state elections earlier.

The previously infallible BN, the powers-that-were for 61 years, was given a resounding telling off by the rakyat by way of the ballot box. They were rejected on many fronts by the people. The fact that eight ministers and 19 deputy ministers lost their seats tells you a lot about the rakyat's dissatisfaction.

So what really happened? How did this wind of change come about? The way I see it, it was a simple case of the people being tired and weary and deciding that enough was enough. It was time to stand up to corruption, tyranny, racial and religious discrimination and arrogance.

The government had forgotten that it was supposed to serve the needs of the people. It had become self-serving in many ways. It had reached a point where the government thought they could do whatever they wanted and get away with it. There was no accountability and this came from the very top itself.

If questions were asked, just deny it and pretend the incident never happened. To further stifle questions and opinion, new laws such as the Anti-Fake News Law were brought in. The government began to treat the people like fools. They forgot where the real power lies. In the hands of the rakyat.

In the lead up to the election, there were many things done that were akin to cheating, at least in my mind.

The redelineation exercise, or more popularly known as gerrymandering, carved out new constituencies of largely differing sizes. It was also said that these new delineations were carved out according to racial lines. While the rakyat protested, the gazetting of the redelineated constituencies was whizzed through Parliament.

The application to register the loose coalition of opposition parties under a common banner known as Pakatan Harapan was delayed for a long time and finally rejected.

Then there was the Registrar of Societies finding fault with Bersatu and temporarily suspending them. This meant that Bersatu would not be able to use its logo in the elections.

Not to be deterred, the leaders of the opposition got together and decided to contest under a common logo, choosing to take the logo of PKR. This was the first time ever in Malaysian history that the opposition had campaigned and contested under a single banner.

The trickery didn’t end there. The Election Commission suddenly deemed it as a new rule that only faces of those that were contesting or direct party leaders were allowed on posters and billboards. They even went so far as to cut out pictures of leaders, especially of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to leave gaping holes on billboards.

Sadly, double standards seemed to be at play as many other leaders, especially from the then ruling party were allowed to stay. Election day was declared to be on a Wednesday, and it wasn’t even declared as a public holiday until the rakyat protested. And protested vehemently. It was beginning to appear that the ruling party didn’t want people to vote. It began to appear that they wanted to do whatever they could to hold on to power.

Finally, there was the oft-repeated trick of fear-mongering. For years, we had been indoctrinated to believe that we had to vote BN to ensure development, stability, racial integration and the like. For years, we were faced with the bogeyman of May 13. We were fed stories of how racial riots would repeat and that was a reason to ensure stability by keeping BN in power.

We have a new date now to teach our children. May 9 is the day the power of the rakyat brought about a change in government.

The first signs of people power at work was when “crowdsourcing” groups were set up to help finance people to get back to their hometowns to vote. It got bigger when you had people offering to set up carpools and share rides with total strangers. Never before had I seen that happen.

Then when postal votes got delayed being sent out and many thought that they would miss their chance at voting, the rakyat stepped up again and mobilised themselves as runners to bring postal votes back from overseas destinations. Just so their fellow Malaysians would not lose out at their chance at voting.

So yes, it appears that all the apparent shenanigans and trickery backfired on the ruling party because not only did they lose the elections, they lost it badly. Really badly.

I, like many other Malaysians, stayed up practically the whole night waiting for the results and I was left teary-eyed and at the same time brimming with pride at what my fellow Malaysians had just done. We effected change at the ballot box with no violence.

The beauty of this is that the rakyat seem to have awakened and have taken the power back into their hands. The best thing about this is that the rakyat is saying that they will give this new government five years to carry out their task. If in five years time, they do not show any improvement or have not performed as they were expected to, then the rakyat will kick them out again and replace them with someone else. Just the way as it should be.

So while congratulations are in order for the MPs and state assemblypersons, let me give you all a word of advice. Please don't take the rakyat for granted or treat them like fools. Remember that we have the power to put you in Parliament and we have the same power to remove you at the next elections. If you choose to ignore the rakyat, you do so at your own peril.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.