COMMENT | Never would I have thought that I would become that older guy who would tell stories to the younger people about how things were back in the day. I’m 47 years old and, as cliche as it sounds, I do feel like I was in my 20s just yesterday.

Just last week, as I was teaching a journalism course to undergraduates at a local university, I mentioned how protests and demonstrations used to be quite a regular thing in Malaysia before the 2018 general election.

The students stared at me blankly, but I was unperturbed and continued. I talked about how the Bersih demonstrations, which started in 2007 and continued five more times till 2016, played a big role in...