Chaos or the Triumph of Civil Society? Bersih 2.0 through the Eyes of the State and the People
Dr Syed Muhammad Khairudin Aljunied
Monday 26th September 2011
Syed Muhammad Khairudin Aljunied is Assistant Professor at the Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore, where he teaches a number of courses on Southeast Asian history and contemporary Muslim society. His main research interests lie in the overlapping areas of colonial history, the history of ideas, ethnic minorities and social identities in historical Southeast Asia. He is currently working on two major projects; a book manuscript on Malay anticolonial movements in British Malaya as well as the history and social memory of the Jabidah massacre in the Philippines (with Rommel Curaming).
The Bersih protests calling for free and fair elections in the country were at the centre of media attention bymid-2011, with scholars and lay observers predicting the rise of populist democracy in contemporary Malaysia. While such optimism loomed large even in the minds of ordinary Malaysians, the ruling government, on the other hand, had strategically framed the coalition of people’s movements as ‘chaos’ and the handiwork of ‘political enemies’; attempts that were destined to failure.
In this talk, Khairudin discussed the ways in which Bersih 2.0 had been viewed by the state and the people. The disjuncture between state-imposed portrayals of the protests and peoples’ perceptions of what Bersih means to them led to wider observations about state-society relations and how the ruling government had lost grip and cognizance of the rapidly-changing Malaysian society.