The truth is, we are governing in a post-truth environment and we who believe in the Malaysian dream need to step up to ensure that no racial confrontation takes place. The mandate given to us is to govern in a coalition government to secure Malaysian democracy for all Malaysians from all backgrounds.
Here in Malaysia, in Bahasa Melayu, we refer to our homeland as “tanah air”, a compound word in which tanah refers to land, and air refers to the sea. It is an inherently maritime conceptualisation of our nationhood, speaking to our inseparable connection to the sea.
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.
The change of government in May 2018 provides a rare opportunity for Malaysia to revisit some old assumptions and make new ones to move forward. One of the earliest major decisions that will have huge long-term impact by Defence Minister Mat Sabu was to commit the new government to present a Defence White Paper to chart the future.
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…
How do we arrange and re-arrange the institutions of our three-tier government – federal, state and local governments – will remain an important subject for Malaysia for the years to come with huge implications. We have to first ask ourselves, why do we want to…
To have a strong and credible government, it is important that the parties in the ruling coalition are stable, disciplined and purposeful. It is with this objective in mind that I would like to discuss some of the difficulties and challenges faced by DAP in…
Recently, some quarters have accused Tun Dr Mahathir of being the root of all problems that PH is currently facing. While he is no Saint, it would not be accurate to label him as an obstacle to the reform agenda. The historic decision for the…
Over the Cameron Highlands by-election, Najib rebranded his image with the #MaluApaBossku campaign and he became a social media sensation. The political impact of how the beleaguered ex-PM is transformed into a seemingly popular icon has become a concern for many. His image makeover (probably…
The results of the 9 May general election was a “political earthquake” of the highest scale and a “tsunami”. But six month later, some Malaysians have fallen into a mindset that what happened was merely a change of government, just like what happens in other…