I have just had an exhaustive but exhilarating night at the DAP ceramah in Serdang last night. The crowd came in droves, in spite of the pouring rain. Young and old, men and women, boys and girls, they swarmed the rostrum like ants to their quarry as if to signify their impervious solidarity behind the speakers.
Reverberating oratory given by the likes of Fong Po Kuan and Teo Nie Ching arouse in the Serdangians a uniform sense of political awakening that is unprecendented. They roared, they bellowed and they echoed the cries of ’just change it‘! They were one force to be reckoned with. They were the Rakyat exemplified.
In the truest sense of the word ‘rally’, they soaked in the rain, unperturbed, resolutely, unwaveringly taking in the spiels and rhetoric. They trumpeted only in assent, never a moment jeering in dissent (save for a boo or two directed against passing vehicles with the squalid weighing scale emblem). They were one force to be reckoned with. They were the Rakyat exemplified.
There is something ebullient amidst the gloomy rain that is peculiar to put into words. It was like Merdeka all over again. People are seemingly cheering for their liberty that though hard-won, is so priceless that they will not give it up for anything. I felt energized, I felt young, alive and I felt more Malaysian than I ever had before. As I drove home at the stroke of midnight all but drenched, I thought optimistically,”Could this be the rumble before the dawn?” Barisan Neraka, welcome to Democracy!