POLITICAL parties love to make promises. Voters love to hear such lullabies. In the end, it’s always about compromise. You win some, you lose some, and sometimes you’re not even sure which is which.

In our elections, choices are limited – between the bad, the worse, and the unicorns; and sometimes the crazies too, armed with the politics of race or religion or both.

Voters usually choose the lesser evil. In Malaysia’s 2018 general election, the lesser evil was Pakatan Harapan. Now some people are demanding for Pakatan Harapan to fulfil election promises, here and now.

The era of Barisan Nasional is over. Yet the hegemony is here to stay, at least for now. So the fledgling PH government is now surrounded by the same race-based environment inherited from the remnants of the old, corrupt BN regime.

My apologies for stating the obvious but reforms need time, leadership and consultations. Reforms involve a lot of talking, dialogues, debates, with lots of plates of fried meehoon, karipap and pots of sickly sweet teh tarik. It’s a very long, tedious and labourious process. It may take months, even years.

This reminds me of the late Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. He was a communist politician during the Soviet Union era and one of the prominent reformers to rebuild post-communist Russia in the 1990s.

Not that I knew much about him; just stumbled upon this personality via Google search and a few more online links.

With President Boris Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin and his team tried various ways to reform their nation. They set up committees, think-tanks and teams to find new ways to develop Russia. They were sure they were on the right track to reform the economy via the market system.

Some years later, however, Chernomyrdin with his unique sense of humour was quoted as saying: “Whatever organisation we try to create, it always ends up looking like the Communist Party of Soviet Union.”

He also said: “We tried to do better but everything turned out as usual.”

That’s how tough it was to implement changes in Russia after 70 years of Stalinist dictatorial rule. The end of communism did not bring immediate fun and joy to Russians but the nightmare of free market anarchy.

Russia is much better today, I think. But Malaysia is no Russia. We have had our unique blend of democracy – a bit bland, flawed and controlled – dominated by rhetorical noise of race and religion for the last half century.

Therefore, after almost 100 days of a new government, surely we don’t expect the people to stop screaming “kepala bapak”, “Najib”, “1MDB”, “babi”, “pendatang”, “UEC”, “child marriage”, “LGBT” and whatnot at each other. It’s just three months, not 61 years.

But change for the better we must. As long as voters are willing to give this government more time, it could yield something good for the nation.

At least we can pat ourselves on the back for now and say: “I will give enough time for Pakatan Harapan to do their best. If they succeed, it’s good for us. If they fail, it’ll be enough rope for them to hang themselves.”

Say what you want but this government needs more than 100 days, more than a year, perhaps more than a couple of years to show progress.

True, manifestos are important. But have we checked the promises of those who lost GE14? They too promised the sun, the moon and the stars, and centrally planned economy. Some even guaranteed us heaven.

So, we can continue to play the politics of hate or we can do something better. It’s still the same limited choices but if we don’t make our own choice, someone will do it for us at their whim and fancy. – August 3, 2018.

* Wan Hamidi Hamid is a veteran journalist with a deep love and knowledge of rock music

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.