BOOK REVIEW | Parliament, Unexpected: A book unfulfilling

BOOK REVIEW | How do you review a political "memoir" that gives you little more than fleeting memories of one of the most significant periods of Malaysian history?

This was my main challenge in trying to form my opinion as an ordinary reader – not a member of the legal or political elite – in trying to capture the purpose of this book.

By no means am I trying to be disrespectful towards the author, former Dewan Rakyat speaker Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof, or the glowing pre-publication reviews of the book written by senior members of the legal fraternity, but one does wonder if the content flies past the heads of everyday readers like me.

The book begins promisingly enough; the writer joins a small group of personalities who released their memoirs in the past few years, such as Tommy Thomas, Marina Mahathir and Nazir Razak.

In 2018, the opposition won the general election, defeating BN's 60-year rule. It was a time when all of us Malaysians finally felt that change was real and would remain. The heady years between 2018 to 2020 were, of course, filled with drama and migraine-inducing politics (though the latter has gotten a lot worse post-2020), but hope and blind optimism hung in the air.

Parliament, Unexpected, promised the reader an insider's view on what makes Malaysian politics tick but...