The One Over Dog Meat

“I couldn’t believe how much KL has changed in 10 years! When I took a drive through last year, I was wondering what happened to all the shanties!” said N, a London bloke, passing me the plate of fried spicy frog legs.

“Yea, it’s amazing isn’t it?” I said taking the ‘drumstick’ part.

“So do you think that guy who got arrested a few years ago will ever be in power again?” asked N with a mouthful of dog meat.

“You mean Anwar Ibrahim? Speaking of power, we just had our elections yesterday. It was a great upset for the ruling party, and now everyone watches in trepidation if things will get better or not. I do harbour secret hopes of seeing of seeing Anwar in action again, but who knows. His daughter kicked some big wig political ass though and that was a good laugh,” I replied spearing my crocodile meat kebab.

“Man, you think things will get better?” asked D in his Chicago twang, gulping down his shrimp spring roll.

“Do you even know what you mean by ‘better’? The things you read in Times and Newsweek can’t even begin to paint the picture for you! And some of the things my politician says! Out loud! Printed in the national newspapers no less! Aiyo, believe me, things can only get better,” I huffed.

The day after elections, I flew off to Vietnam and sitting in the restaurant and idly chatting with the two blokes at the next table just blew my mind away. I never knew that people outside my country knew of Malaysia. That they would know anything beyond the Twin Towers, F1 Sepang Circuit and Mount Kinabalu just puzzles me. Granted, our national cars have always been laughing fodder material for the lads on Top Gear, and I even applaud any foreigner with knowledge that Jimmy Choo is a Malaysian, but to even know the surface of our politics?

It baffles me because most locals I meet don’t even care about our country’s politics. I nearly blew my top off when one of the assistants told me that she wasn’t bothered to go vote cause her one vote wouldn’t make a difference- her party would just win anyways (it didn’t). I can’t believe in this day and age, there are still some people ignorant enough to treat the freedom to choose as lightly as this. My only hope before the elections was by preaching through word of mouth, and to help spread awareness. I think I nagged A into finally registering. My only hope before the results were announced that enough students had returned from overseas and learned the importance of voting. My only hope was that people woke up and cared enough to vote.

I think the one pet peeve some of my friends have with me is that in any time in the course of the years, they complained about the rising cost of living, petrol, tolls, conditions of our public buildings; I would asked them if they had voted in the last elections. If their response was a negative, I would then tell them that they forfeited their right to complain when they stop caring enough to vote. Because it’s true, if you wanted things to change, then it has to start from you. It didn’t matter who had won the elections, all it mattered to me were the percentage of people that realized if nobody bothered to vote, then our country might as well be renamed Myanmar.

Elections have always been something personal and close to my heart ever since my social studies teacher in the seventh grade (that’s Standard 6 here I think) made us do the mock elections of the then presidential candidates of US. I remember there was a Clinton, Perot and my ever favourite (then) Bush (blame it on the charisma of Reagan). We had class debates over the policies that each candidate adopted and we drew up pros and cons of the ways to reduce national debt deficit and ever problematic global warming. I remember the candidate who was chosen to represent Perot even mumbled and fumbled around just exactly the same way the real live Perot did. I then elected myself a Republican and fervently followed Bush’s campaign. 7th grade social studies brought forth my realization of politics and its workings and the Civil War (or was that history class?).

But lastly, I think the person that influenced me the most to vote was Sun-Tzu. In the Art of War, he wrote that ‘even a single grain of rice can tip the scales of favour’.