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Reformasi had achieved a critical cross-cultural breakthrough which created novel possibilities of multiethnic alliances.10 The Anwar affair had eroded Malay support for UMNO. Malay attitudes towards the Democratic Action Party (DAP) had changed, too. Weeks before Anwar's sacking, DAP's Lim Guan Eng had been jailed for sedition arising out of an UMNO leader's alleged statutory rape of an underaged Malay girl. Many Malays reviewed their former antagonism towards the "Chinese chauvinist", the DAP, because they held that Lim Guan Eng had sacrificed his career and liberty for the sake of a girl "who was not of his race or religion". Many NGOs, whose membership was largely non-Malay, had joined Reformasi to support Anwar but also to continue the 1980s struggles against the Mahathir government over several scandals and crises. With the opposition parties --- PAS, DAP, and Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) --- making common cause, Reformasi drew into its fold "Anwaristas", Islamicists, "Malaysianists", social democrats, NGO activists, women, concerned Christians, and students. Within Reformas i, the ethnic divide blurred. Malaysia's new or reinvented leaders of dissent became figures identified with a political standpoint, not the colour of their skin. They included Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (Anwar's wife), the leaders of the opposition parties, Anwar's team of lawyers, the lawyers voluntarily helping arrested demonstrators, and prominent NGO activists.
If Reformasi had an institutional expression, that would be Gerak (Majlis Gerakan Keadilan Nasional, or Council of the National Justice Movement), an ad hoc coalition of PAS, DAP, PRM, and many NGOs, including ADIL (the precursor of Parti keADILan Nasional [keADILan, or National Justice Party, which was established in April, one week before Anwar's conviction]). Established in September 1998, Gerak operated on the basis of regular consultation among its members. For some time, Gerak seemed experimental and reflective of the fluidity of Reformasi which, like social movements elsewhere, blended bits of the future with bites of the past. Gerak's own dialogues were often disagreements among...