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COMMENT | The day after GE14, my friend Ken said he felt a release from oppression. He’s never been locked up, not once physically robbed of freedom. Not even pepper sprayed; we marched together in Bersih 4, and by then the FRU had stopped brutalising peaceful demonstrators. But on May 10 he exhaled a deep breath, tangibly relieved and mysteriously liberated.

BN’s reign was more a cloud on our minds than shackles at our feet. In a way, it would be easier to identify what held us back, and what to do next, if BN had ruled with an iron fist, a hard authoritarianism. We totally reset, rebuild from scratch; erase the constitution and write a new one.

But the authoritarianism was of a softer, subtle, insidious sort. Now we cry for greater freedom, equality, unity amid diversity. These are all winsome and wholesome things – but there is a learning process ahead, punctuated with subtlety, ambiguity and tension. Taking away restrictions on freedom and obstacles to equality, as promised by Pakatan Harapan, is right and necessary, but incomplete without clarifying and promoting these freedoms and broadening our conception of equality and diversity.

The people clamouring loudest for freedom will most heartily welcome it – activists, civil society leaders, “professionals”, journalists and editors, publishers, a handful of academics. I wonder, are we, as a nation, on the same page ...

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