COMMENT I agree with Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed - if there is no Bersih movement fighting for electoral and institutional reforms, there will be no Umno-linked red-shirt hooligans trying to derail them.

As he had opined, if Bersih were to stop, the red-shirts will too.

But to use the same logic - if the government were to stop its excesses and abuses, Bersih will too.

After all, the only reason Bersih was formed from the combined efforts of civil society, was because of the electoral liberties and institutional corruption fomented by the BN in its tenure as the government of the day.

And thus, if the minister would want Bersih to stop, he should look to clean house in his own domicile first perhaps before asking Bersih to swab its deck.

For the very corruption that is like a cancer at the heart of the Malaysia stems from the party where he is a member, the government he is a part of, and the cabinet he knowingly sits on.

If he truly wants Bersih to go, he does not need to support his compatriots' tendency to threaten the public with red-shirt violence to cow legitimate democratic dissent...