COMMENT | Anwar made me believe in something

COMMENT | “Go listen to Anwar (Ibrahim) speak at a ceramah, and I guarantee you’ll be convinced,” my friend told me almost 10 years ago.

Even in a crowd of hundreds of thousands, Anwar has the magical ability to make you feel like he’s speaking directly to you.

Whether to students about the plight of rural-poor Malays in Baling, first-time protesters at Kuala Lumpur when he first uttered the transformative words of “Reformasi”, or the roaring crowd at the Black 505 rally who felt the elections were stolen from them.

Unscripted and off-the-cuff, laced with humour and anger, Anwar tells you a story of the inequality between the haves and have-nots, and he makes you care for the country you longed to...