AFTER two decades of “Reformasi”, two generations of resistance to “Malaysia lama” spent September addressing crowds of Malaysians living in Australia about “Malaysia baru” and the horizon ahead.

Veteran reformasi activist and PKR’s Chua Tian Chang, better known as Tian Chua, blitzed three Australian cities in four days over the Hari Merdeka weekend, provoking a raft of thorny questions about a new Malaysia that were sometimes left unanswered.

Weeks later, DAP icon Lim Kit Siang met with and spoke candidly about his views of a post-GE14 Malaysia.

Both leaders encouraged Malaysians to not judge the new coalition government too quickly or harshly.

The 77-year-old Lim occasionally displayed flashes of his famed street-fighting rhetoric when answering questions in jammed venues across Perth, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, before continuing his tour of the Malaysian diaspora this week in New Zealand.

Lim wanted the Melbourne crowd, which packed three rooms with scores more stranded outside on a Saturday evening, to forgive but not necessarily forget the DAP’s old foes. In the new Malaysia the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government hopes to build, “we all need to have a big picture outlook, to have a long vision.”

He alluded to criticisms that some within the new government had “tainted” pasts, especially Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“Tainted people? We’re all tainted. To some, Mahathir is tainted. Let’s give a chance to all who’re tainted to turn over a new leaf,” Lim told the crowd.

Lim said it was not easy putting aside past wrongs, but said he was doing so for the “larger interest of the nation”.

“Personally, of course, you’ve jailed me twice (referring to the previous BN regime). You say I’m anti-Malay, I’m anti-Islam, you tell lies about me,” he said.

But he urged Malaysians to “be above ourselves”.

“We must rise above our personal likes and dislikes. National interest, national good.”

A few weeks earlier, Chua took to the stage at a “Malam Merdeka” dinner event in Sydney featuring Malaysian dancers, and a performance by Saloma’s niece Rozita Rohaizad that included the crowd singing to Sejahtera Malaysia.

Unlike the mostly older crowd that attended Lim Kit Siang’s talk a few weeks later, many younger Malaysians at Chua’s event had been part of the storied overseas voters contingent that had gone to great lengths to vote at the 14th general election.

“I was quite surprised when Dr Mahathir invited me to his office the day before he quit Umno. We hadn’t seen each other since 1999, when he had advised me to eat more as I was going in and out of jail so often,” Chua said, as the audience laughed along.

“Both of us we alone in his office, and I started by saying that most of the time we’ve been opposite each other (sic), we’ve disagreed about most things, we have fought over various issues. But one thing I’ve never doubted was his commitment to Malaysia, never doubted his love for the country,” he said of the 2016 meeting with the 93-year-old.

“Today, whether it’s led by Anwar or Dr Mahathir, Malaysia will be governed by the set of principles laid down in the (PH GE14) manifesto. It doesn’t matter who takes over from Dr Mahathir, and after Anwar there will be others. We have to follow a new way of governance.”

This question of Dr Mahathir’s notorious authoritarianism, and how it had damaged Malaysia’s democracy by the time of 1998’s reformasi, intrigued the Australian parliamentarians Chua met with during this short trip.

When catching up with Anthony Albanese, the former Australian deputy prime minister who’s now a senior leader of the opposition Labour Party, Chua explained how a delicate coalition of parties was galvanised to win power after the corruption and other scandals of the previous regime proved too much for Malaysia.

For New South Wales MP Jamie Parker of the Greens a few days earlier, at a parliamentary lunch and tour co-hosted by the half-Malaysian MP Jenny Leong, the irony of Chua and leaders like Mohamad Sabu and Lim Guan Eng now working closely with their former jailer proved to be great conversation over panna cotta dessert.

But it was the discussions about the bruising PKR elections headlined by Rafizi Ramli’s challenge to Mohamed Azmin Ali, and the opposing camps Chua and his party peers were slotting into that made the long road trip between his Canberra and Sydney events so weary.

“Sometimes people forget that some of us were pushing for the reforms we’re discussing as policy today, before this time 20 years ago. We helped start the reformasi movement, we weren’t parachuted in afterwards,” he said. – October 1, 2018.