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COMMENT | So, the rally against the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd) appears to have passed, predictably, without major incident.

It feels like the entire episode generated a fair amount of anxiety among certain quarters.

I think it is fair to take last Saturday as yet another indication that Malaysians at large simply do not have an appetite for violence.

While many of us disagree strongly with the various political positions and views espoused by those at the rally, I believe they had every right to gather peacefully, and that appears to be exactly what they did.

In thinking about the rally, and the various anxieties surrounding it, it may be wise to remember the kinds of things activists and Pakatan Harapan supporters would tell the BN government in days of yore: we only want to exercise our constitutional right to free speech, peaceful assemblies should always be allowed, and so on.

In those days, the BN government would peddle their fearmongering line, casting the spectre of May 13 and so on, warning of how protests would lead to riots.

It’d be nice to think that Malaysian democracy was past all that.

A relatively harmless conduit

It would be unreasonable to expect all the politics of race and religion to go away overnight.

Lingering political sentiment that has race and religion as its core will surely need a vehicle for expression, and this last Saturday’s gathering was a good a conduit as any.

In the end, a few tens of thousands of people came to KL, had their gathering, and went home, without any major incident – just like the many previous Bersih rallies before them...

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