The Deep Historical Significance of GE14
By Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng
September 2018 PICKING ON THE PAST
Whatever one’s politics may be, one has to admit that the origins of the Federation of Malaysia are complicated and are overlaps of compromises made over time to define a middle ground that was democratic enough and yet centralized enough to be comfortably stable.The middle ground that developed, however, came almost always to be defined in terms of racial balances, to the detriment of other parameters relevant to a modern economy, such as class tensions, urban-rural divides and various socio-economic...
Dato' Dr. Ooi Kee Beng
is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His latest book is Signals in the Noise: Notes on Penang, Malaysia and the World (Singapore: Faction Press) Homepage: wikibeng.com.
