COMMENT Street demonstrations did not exactly start with those that greeted the sacking and public humiliation of Anwar Ibrahim at about this time on the annual calendar 17 years ago.

They began a long time before that in our history though the powers-that-be like to pretend that it is a recent and wholly illegitimate phenomenon.

It is not. Street demos have had a pedigree more renowned that its critics care to admit.

Umno's demonstrations against the Malayan Union proposals in 1946 could well have marked the starting point of the phenomena, but a selective memory prevents principals from the self-scrutiny that's an invaluable aid for the upkeep of one's integrity.

When as a pre-university student Mahathir Mohamad made his initial forays into political activism in Alor Star, speaking out against the Malayan Union, he must have figured in demos against what was seen as a British coup against Malay suzerainty on the peninsula.

Almost seven decades later the arc of his career has come full circle with a cameo appearance yesterday at Bersih's fourth demonstration, a walk-on part whose brevity cannot subtract from its reverberating significance.

His exhortation “ Teruskan (Forge on), teruskan ” to the demonstrators has placed the seal of establishment approval on street demos that its organisers could not have dreamt of obtaining since they began their campaign for electoral reform eight years ago.

Mahathir is very much an establishment figure though these days he is so much contraband.

Recall his implied putdown of street protesters when it was announced in May 2000 that Zeti Akhtar Aziz was appointed governor of Bank Negara, the first woman to be chosen for the position.

The appointment was made in tandem with the elevation of other women to high position in the civil service.

“The men are busy involved in street demonstrations,” remarked Mahathir acidly, having earlier publicly and favourably noted that women were beginning to outpace men in administrative and other capacities in Malaysia, not to mention university admissions.

Thoroughly flummoxed

Allusion to this episode is not gratuitous.

Would Mahathir be in the position of having to give his tacit support to a street protest these days if Zeti has indeed worn well as Bank Negara Governor?

His putdown of street protesters as wastrels does not, in retrospect, stack up well against the presumed boost to gender equality that Zeti's appointment in 2000, which he lauded, suggested.

In recent years, the international NGO, Global Financial Integrity, has exposed the porousness of the financial system in the country with its annual reports that illicit outflows in the billions of ringgit place Malaysia in the upper echelons of a global 'balk money' league.

The same system appears to have been dozing when a 'donation', or as sceptics like Mahathir contend an 'embezzlement', wound its way into Prime Minister Najib Razak's personal bank account.

Plainly, the former PM's brief appearance at the Bersih demo is not due to new-fangled enthusiasm for a phenomenon he has long castigated.

It's just that he's thoroughly flummoxed by the strong perimeter defense waged by the sitting PM over the fallout from the scandal plagued state-owned fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, so that he has to concede that Bersih's methods are useful tor the goal he has sought since August this year: the de-legitimisation of the premiership of Najib Razak.

That de-legitmisation would have ben easier had Zeit been more thorough on her watch of the financial system.

No need, then, for Mahathir to do what he has just done – semaphored support for a phenomenon he was loath to back.

As for contributors to gender equality, one would say that Bersih chair Maria Chin Abdullah and before her, Ambiga Sreenevasan, have contributed more signally to something that represents an advance on democratic practice in Malaysia: they have made well-organised and peceful street protests, what is some parts of the world is called 'symbolic speech' but in this country is abjured by the authorities as mutinious, acceptable and, from now on, worthy of emulation.

Both have helped breach a formidable psychological barrier. Henceforth, street protests, if held peacefullly, should showcase the maturation of our democracy.

Bravo Bersih!

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.