Economic hardship hits everyone. And hits the lower income groups and the poor most, regardless of race and religion. Many of us have seen photos of long lines of queue in front of pawnshops on the first day after the strict movement control order (MCO)…
Labour Day 2020 is not just another bank holiday, the way we have come to think of 1st May in recent decades. With the Covid-19 pandemic pushing the world into a global economic crisis, there is today a painful awareness that having a job is…
Those who think that the COVID-19 crisis will end within three weeks or even three months are deluding themselves. Governments and societies that do not understand this bare fact will see their front-liners suffer or perish, and their healthcare systems collapse; and this will be…
Much as I opposed the political coup that brought in the current regime, I want to be as bipartisan as possible to ensure the government would make the right call in this time of Covid-19 pandemic. Otherwise, there will be people starving and possible social…
I was one of the earliest in Malaysia to use the war analogy to describe our fight against the spread of Covid-19. This provocative perspective has now become a popularly accepted one. But be that as it may, I find that many have yet to…
At the invitation of Persatuan Arkitek Malaysia President Lilian Tay and my friend Tan Loke Mun, who chairs Kuala Lumpur Architecture Festival, I was given the honour to speak at the event to a distinguished audience who cares about our cities and their future. The…
56% of Malaysian workers in Singapore are considered low- and semi-skilled and work as cheap labour. They work as cleaners, security guards, bus drivers, hotel and F&B workers, factory workers and machine operators etc.
For any political groupings that intend to win from the middle, we need to genuinely acknowledge that Malaysians have more similarities than differences. The majority, while coming from different cultural backgrounds, share similar aspirations.
We need to “resurrect” the notion of Asia. ASEAN Centrality is great, and as long as ASEAN gets its acts together, it is a great power house. But Asia the label is something that we shouldn’t lose either.
For a generation or even two since the ascendance of neoliberalism in the 1980s, the world has very much been conditioned to think that weak states with no regulation, low taxes, free movement of money, the financialisation of housing property, and cheap labour, are good…