KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s first overnight street rally ended at midnight on Sunday, marked by surprise twists as the organiser claimed hundreds of thousands of people turned up to protest against corruption in the government and to call for electoral reforms.

“This was a surprisingly peaceful rally. [It] almost felt like we just went for a carnival,” said Lam Chee Chung, who attended the Bersih 2 rally in 2011, when he was part of a group of protesters forced to take refuge at Tung Shin Hospital in Jalan Pudu after a police crackdown.

The rally kicked off at 2pm on Saturday and after the initial round of speeches, appeared to have fizzled out slightly.

But in an unexpected twist, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his wife, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali, shocked the crowds and the organiser when they made a pit stop at Dataran Merdeka.

“Thank you for coming. We invited all, and hope more people from Umno will join us as this is a national call for reform,” Bersih 2.0 chairman Maria Chin Abdullah said.

Dr Mahathir appeared once again at the rally on Sunday, this time staying on long enough to address the media.

In the days running up to the weekend protest, the home affairs ministry announced a slew of sanctions on the rally, including declaring the gathering illegal and making thinly veiled references to intervention by the army.

The organiser, however, maintained that the protest was a legal right of Malaysians to partake in a peaceful rally to voice their frustration at the current leadership.

The weekend rally ended at midnight on Sunday, with the singing of the national anthem to mark the country’s 58th year of independence. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in digitaledge Daily, on September 1, 2015.