Saturday, May 19, 2018

Ode to the Election Commission




ODE TO THE ELECTION COMMISSION


By Meera Badmanaban

 

You were born after independence, for our nation.

Set up under Article 114 of the Federal Constitution,

To regulate and oversee the running of an election,

With efficiency and transparency, was your mission. 

 

Your task to register voters, strike out the deceased,

Oversee borders of constituencies if populations increased.

Appropriately redraw boundaries, if under-represented,

The guardian of the electorate, fairly administrated.

 

A partisan body of independence and scrutiny,

You held in your palms the country’s destiny.

Why did you choose to create disharmony?

With blatant gerrymandering so deliberately?

 

Did you think we would be quiet for ever,

That you could manipulate us whenever?

That we were brainless, or not as clever,

And we would never fight back, ever?

 

How wrong you were, you great authority,

We swept aside six decades of atrocity.

Fed up with your corruption and superiority,

You underestimated us, we are a majority.

 

We queued up for hours, baking in the heat,

Determined, silently waiting, refusing defeat.

With wrongly labelled boxes, why did you cheat?

Did you think we are sheep just here to bleat?

 

 

We the Rakyat are not stupid, make no mistake.

Be accountable for the responsibility you undertake.

Did you not care that our freedom was at stake?

Our right to vote yours to safeguard and caretake?

 

And so we stained our fingers with crimson,

Unfolded the ballot papers, acting in unison.

Our will unbending, steely, despite jettison,

Hearts and hands trembling with our weapon.

 

Did you see our power when ignited, united?

Toppling the monsters that you knighted

Your turn will come, spotted, investigated,

Corruption and cronyism unearthed, blighted.

 

Behold and witness our silent revolution,

Quietly and peacefully, in Malaysian tradition.

Demise of a kleptocracy with swift execution,

Truth and democracy the future of our nation.

 



Bio : Meera Badmanaban is a law lecturer and ordinary Malaysian citizen. She believes that poetry can be a powerful means of social change. 


This poem is dedicated to the people of Malaysia after the tsunami of the 14th General Election that toppled 6 decades of power by the ruling coalition.


Meera's creative process :

She will always cherish the memory of her ink stained fingers in GE14. Toppling a ruling coalition of six decades was something unimaginable at one time. But it happened. A quiet revolution. The rise of a new dawn, full of hopes and dreams. 

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