MAY 13 — Today marks a year shy of five decades after the bloody race riot of 1969, and perhaps for the first time in ages Malaysians will feel less heavy in their hearts over a prospect of it ever recurring.

On May 9, roads across the Klang Valley were largely empty aside from those near polling centres. Most people dashed out to vote, and promptly dashed home.

Over the day, most opted to stay in watching the nail-biting results trickle in, and as it became clear that Pakatan Harapan (PH) would sweep into power and news that there were powers that were trying to stop that from happening, worry started to set in.

But change we did, and the dawn of a new Malaysia that must have felt extra sunnier and breezier. (I would not know, arriving home just after 6am after perhaps the longest night of my life.)

All the racial and religious fear-mongering over the last few days, and months fell flat. The transition of power has been fairly smooth, if not without minor bumps along the way.

That in itself is a massive triumph for us as a nation.

Despite my biggest fears, I have to concede that religion played a largely negligible role in campaigning, although not quite absent.

Just one day before polling, pro-Islamist group Gerakan Pengundi Sedar (GPS) released a list of 26 seats that it said must be won by Muslims.

GPS has been lobbying for voters to choose candidates that it felt would further the Islamist and pro-Bumiputera agenda. In those 26 seats, GPS had blacklisted several candidates for reasons ranging from being “anti-Islam” or a “Christian evangelist”, “supporting the Malaysian Malaysia concept” to “opposing hudud”.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (C) celebrates with his coalition leaders on early May 10, 2018. Malaysia’s opposition alliance Pakatan Harapan won a historic election victory, ending the six-decade rule of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. — Picture by Reuters

The campaign had been supported by Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma), which released promotional materials with the slogan “Vote an adept Muslim candidate” in the Malay Jawi script... perhaps assuming that only Malay-Muslims would get the message, assuming they could even read it at all.

It was hardly a surprise that all 26 “winnable” candidates it had endorsed came from Islamist party PAS. But it must have shocked GPS to the bone that none of them had come close to winning.

In fact, 15 of them lost their deposits, or more than half of those endorsed candidates.

Unsurprisingly, GPS never talked about this list again.

Another of its ilk, the coalition of groups Ummah, published a declaration two days before polling pledging the support of its purportedly 5 million members to support candidates who are staunch supporters of Islamic superiority.

It also urged Malaysians to reject candidates and parties who had called for the abolition of unilateral conversion of minors into Islam, and those who supported a religious harmony Act.

Ummah was similarly floored. It has gone quiet ever since the results came out.

In total, PAS only won 18 federal seats, a downward trend from 21 in 2013, and its peak of 23 in 2008 when it first joined Pakatan Rakyat.

Malay Mail’s calculation puts the popular vote for PAS at roughly 1 million, less than one in 10 of the total registered voters — and a far cry from the 5 million that Ummah itself has promised. Which meant Ummah’s members themselves either preferred PH or Barisan Nasional (BN) candidates, or just did not bother to vote.

PAS may have won the east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu, but that did not necessarily signal endorsement for its Islamist policies. It was more likely an indication of the public’s eagerness to kick Najib Razak and BN out, and PAS just happened to be the Opposition that was familiar enough to them.

What was clear is that Islamism has little traction with Malaysians.

For all the time and resources Parliament and the Malaysian public wasted on RUU355 — the private member’s Bill by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang to impose harsher Shariah offences, and previously to pave way for hudud -- voters really did not care much for it.

They did not care about establishing a government that puts Islamic scriptures as the supreme source of law and governance.

Voters did not care about allegations that Jews were funding anti-establishment agents to interfere with our politics and destabilise the country.

They did not care much about alleged Christian evangelists in DAP. Or childish imagination of a “DAP virus” with elements of secularism, chauvinism, pro-LGBT, and anti-Islam that wishes to amend the Constitution, as Umno-owned paper Utusan Malaysia had featured.

All of those paled in comparison to wishing to climb out of the pain caused by rising costs of living, and shame at a slew of mismanagement and abuse of power cases at the hands of BN.

They do not compare with the fervent desire to see a new and respectable Malaysia, a country that they can be proud of, and they can live in without fear and bitterness.

But stay vigilant we must, until we have removed the tendrils of Islamisation that has crept into the administration over the years and restore common sense.

Already, GPS has changed its fear-mongering to warn that there are now 86 non-Muslim MPs — just over one-third of 222 of total seats.

In a statement on Friday, Isma expressed similar concern, listing down “DAP-dominated states” such as Penang, Johor, Negri Sembilan and Perak.

“Isma hopes they will respect the Federal Constitution, not discriminate any race and not prioritise just one race,” its president Abdullah Zaik Abd Rahman said, which was laughable if not hypocritical for a group that cares only about the Malays.

Malay rights group Perkasa, whose president Ibrahim Ali lost his deposits in both Rantau Panjang and Tendong in Kelantan, had also the gall to deliver a warning to the PH government.

“Perkasa will not compromise with any attempts to allow the free practice of LGBT in the country. Similarly with attempts to close down government agencies such as Jakim, Perkasa will absolutely oppose,” its secretary-general Syed Hasan Ali said, referring to the federal Islamic agency.

There is work yet to be done, but Malaysia has delivered a clear message: in this new Malaysia, race and religious-baiting have no place.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.