COMMENT “Artists are the antennae of the race,” observed Ezra Pound, better known for his midwife role in the creation of literary masterpieces of the last century than for his own oeuvre.

It’s not too strenuous a leap from Pound’s opinion of whose radar is the more sensitive among society’s early warning systems to the role played by A Samad Said in the current movement for political change in Malaysia.

The news that Bersih plans to stage a demonstration, a sit-down actually, on April 28 at Dataran Merdeka was flagged by the presence of the literary eminence at the press conference yesterday to announce the event.

The fact the national literary laureate will take part in the Bersih protest, as he did in the two previous editions of the electoral reform body’s push for change, will no doubt galvanise the movement.

The sight of the reedy septuagenarian, trailing flowing white mane and whiskers, walking in the front ranks of protesters, has helped to endow the massed ranks of Bersih with iconic imagery...