COMMENT | When DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang said in January that 2020 was the make or break year for Pakatan Harapan, little did anyone realise that not only a certain segment of the voting public had to deal with a backdoor government but all Malaysians had to deal with a pandemic.

There are of course obvious personalities, some would wrongly claim heroes and villains, who were more high profile than my picks and an argument could be made that they shaped this country's mainstream narratives more than my choices. 

However, I believe that these Malaysians highlighted the inequalities of the system and defined the year in a more immediate way than the high profile characters that in my opinion, were part of the problem.

My top five newsmakers are ordinary Malaysians who, unlike politicians, demonstrated what it means to be a Malaysian. Not in the sense of manufactured ideology but rather by their actions, which hopefully remind us that although the light at the end of the tunnel is distant, it is still reachable.

Here are my top five newsmakers in no particular order.

Boo Su-Lyn

If you are not aware of the kind of work that Code Blue editor Boo Su- Lyn does, you should pay attention to the work done by the editorial team of Code Blue, with its tagline "Health is a human right".

It is disappointing that during this Covid-19 pandemic, the work done by Code Blue in educating the public about not only their rights as citizens but the current health industry in Malaysia has gone unnoticed. The only time they get any kind of attention is when the state security apparatus questioned Boo for reporting on supposedly classified findings of the Sultanah Aminah Hospital fire which killed six patients.