Today is the 8th of March. 17 years ago, the 12th General Elections took place and the results were shocking, to say the least. Mighty BN lost 5 states and the much-cherished 2/3s majority in Parliament.
Coincidentally, I'm currently finishing up on Karim Raslan's 'Ceritalah 3'( I know, finally!), a collection of his columns and essays written between 2002 to 2008. What's interesting to me was how Karim, an astute political observer and commentator, absolutely did not see what transpired coming. He was confident of another landslide for Pak Lah and co.
After all, just 4 years before, BN won a whopping 198 seats. How did someone so popular lost so much support in such a short period of time? (Well, I know exactly who was partly responsible but the theory is not exactly Ramadan-friendly, haha.)
It's also interesting to note Karim's tone in "The Aftermath" section of his book. Suddenly he acknowledged that BN actually had it coming. But my absolute favourite was this rant on the state of mainstream media: "It should be clear by now that the political control of the media is paradoxical and self-defeating. The BN has to free the MSM from their bondage and allow the journalists and editors to report what they have long known but cannot say -- all the more so since the public will looking for objective, unbiased reporting and analysis of the opposition's record in the states they now hold.
"The 'spin' that has characterised the Malaysian media for the past decades must end. In short, nothing works like the unvarnished truth..." But we all know what happened 10 years later...
