GE13 was a time of hope. A time of change... Or so we thought. Everyone was suddenly so gungho, and so many voters turned up at their respective polling stations early in the morning. Compared to GE12 in 2008, the number of voters skyrocketed. I heard of a man who reached his station at 6:30, just to be the first to vote. There was also a really old man who passed away while waiting for his turn to cast his vote. That's what I call SEMANGAT.
Across Malaysia, people aged 21 and above lined up at their 'Saluran', to wait for their turn to get their fingers inked, choose a party and insert their ballots into the boxes.
Everyone (mostly everyone) had their eyes fixed onto TV and computer screens, refreshing their web browsers every few seconds in hopes of seeing their favoured party gain more votes each time.
Twitter and Facebook got spammed with tweets and statuses about the GE and seriously, even the teenagers (underaged, I mean) were excited. We saw the existing government and the opposition gain seats slowly. But the TV stations & websites were giving us completely different news. However, both told us that Barisan Nasional had a steady lead. Hours and hours went by, with the opposition lagging behind. And then it happened.
I remember seeing the number '54' below the BN logo and the number '27' under the Opposition logos. I clicked refresh and...
Voila.
BN now had 97 votes, and Opposition had just crept up to 31.
WHAT LOGIC WAS THIS?
Twitter exploded with angry tweets filled with hatred for the corruption in this election. No way forty plus seats could be taken in one second.
We watched as BN soared to 112 seats, the number of seats needed to win the election. My brother started #UnfairElectionsMalaysia2013 on Twitter, having got 180+ retweets on his tweet as of now.
The hashtag did not trend, but every time you refreshed the hashtag, there'd be three or so new tweets. Proud of my brother, man.
You could see how united the Malaysians were at this point, being upset, disappointed and angry at our government for the corruption. Turns out that SPR had had a 'blackout', an electricity trip, just before the votes soared high. They had added extra ballots in favour of BN during the blackout.
Everyone soon began talking about the blackout and a massive change was seen on Facebook and Twitter. People were changing their profile pictures to a plain black square, just to show how the blackout had made Malaysians feel so angry.
Today, my family wore black. Anwar Ibrahim, PKR leader, tweeted "Wear black", getting 3000+ retweets when I saw it.
However mad or angry or upset we are, all I can say is that if you can't understand why God is allowing all this, all we need to do is trust His heart and His plans. Many prayers were said that night, and many were answered; just not with a 'yes'.
Lord,
I pray that Your peace, love and guidance will be upon this nation. I pray that the hatred will fade as it gets us nowhere. Father help us to realize that this is our chance to be the salt and light of Malaysia. I also pray that our petition to the United Nations will make an impact, and I thank You for the 100,000+ votes needed for it to be taken into consideration. Thank You Lord for uniting us Malaysians, and I pray that our hearts will understand Your will from all this.
In Jesus' Name,
Amen.
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