Seven years on, the pioneer street rally NGO Coalition for Free and Fair Elections (Bersih) is finding another way to bring Malaysians together - and not just the angry people.

Although Bersih is more known for organising three mammoth rallies - in 2007, 2011 and in 2012 - drawing tens of thousands of people wearing yellow T-shirts into the streets of Kuala Lumpur to push for electoral changes, it hopes to show a different face this month.

Thomas Fann ( seated second from right ), who  was recently appointed Bersih's south region vice-chairperson, sees its Delineation, Action and Research Team (DART) as a different beast altogether.

"A lot of people think the end of DART is 4.0. No, no, actually...no!" Fann said in an interview.

He said people are wrong if they think that DART is only to back the fourth Bersih rally. Bersih does not rule out calling another mammoth rally if the EC does not respond to the people's demands.

"I am a new Bersih steering committee member but I think rest of my colleagues would agree.... Bersih is not just a rally organiser, it is an electoral reform coalition and this takes many forms.

“All the Bersih rallies were for the purpose of putting pressure, so that there would be some concessions given for free and fair elections."

Under its DART initiative, to be officially rolled out nationwide tomorrow, Bersih hopes to draw small groups of five to eight people to sit down, explore, discuss, checklist and help the Election Commission (EC) draw a ‘fairer’ electoral map that maintains local ties.

This will be for the purpose of roping in 100-120 voters who are prepared to object if the new electoral map, expected to be revealed by EC to Parliament shortly, is not fair.

    

If Bersih 2.0 was co-led by strong oratory personalities such as former Bar Council chairperson Ambiga Sreenevasan and national laurette A Samad Said, the new Bersih steering committee can be considered a more subtle, administrative-focused team headed by soft-spoken Maria Chin Abdullah.

Equally mild mannered and soft spoken is Fann, who joined Bersih because of his strength as a "voter educator".

A former church pastor who once lived in Uganda, Fann said he was doing this for the bright future of his two children and other Malaysians. He now lives in Johor.

DART is about finding common ground

“DART is about finding common ground among all the different races of Malaysia - the desire for justice and a government that is answerable to them,” he said.

Fann said the initial soft-launch of DART in Johor last month surprised him.

“The pioneers of the DART team for P158  (Tebrau parliamentary seat), who were mostly strangers to one another, started arranging meetings to check their boundaries, using Google maps to zoom in on suspicious looking boundaries, talking to candidates in the last GE for inside knowledge, and doing site visits to confirm facts.

“After two meetings, they started drawing up their preferred boundary and proposed a new delineation that fulfils most of our guidelines. They are enjoying this process and making new friends,” Fann said.

    

Ethnicities don’t matter, it won’t be perfect

    

Fann said DART's aim was more “ground up” effort, whereas Tindak - another group pressuring EC for a fairer electoral map -  may have a more “top down” idea of how to draw up a perfect system of equal voter constituencies.

DART members were encouraged to ignore the ethnicity issue and not try to carve in minority races, as can sometimes happen.

"We do consider that if they are part of a mono-ethnic community, then that community should be preserved and not be cut up or diluted. If local ties means a more mono-ethnic group, then that should be respected," he said.

As it is a very ground-based effort, Fann believes that DART's biggest enemies will not be politicians or even the government. It would the apathy of the voting public, who only want to take part in "politics" every five years or so, during the general elections.

"That is probably still true. That's what I am discovering more and more... 90 percent of the people don't really care about electoral boundaries.

"But it takes so little to actually make a difference. All it takes is 100 people in a constituency of 60,000 voters to actually make a big difference for democracy in Malaysia.

"Though there is a lot of apathy, I agree, getting 100 or more people who care in each constituency should not be a big challenge," Fann added

DART kicks off  in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, tomorrow. For more details on how you can take part in this, go to the Bersih website .