Wikibeng

[Author’s speech at the online Book Launch: Ooi Kee Beng: As Empires Fell. The Life and Times of Lee Hau-Shik, Malaya’s First Finance Minister (ISEAS Publishing 2020): 27 August 2020] OOI KEE BENG (Executive Director, Penang Institute; Senior Fellow, Jeffrey Cheah Institute for Southeast Asia, Sunway University, and; Visiting Senior Fellow, ISEAS – Yusof Ishak … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial, Penang Monthly, February 2021 AS COVID-19 steadily dismantles the Old Normal, our uncertainties get more and more focused on basics. No longer do we worry as much about that continually postponed overseas trip as much as we do about whether we are allowed to exercise in the neighbourhood park. No … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, For The Edge Malaysia, 27 December 2020 – 2 January 2021 IN A CRISIS, especially one as globe-spanning as the Covid-19 pandemic, society gets defensive and social interactions become apprehensive. Outsiders are eyed suspiciously and parochial tendencies grow strong. The moral capacity of individuals is put to the test. The immediate … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly Editorial, December 2020 THERE IS A persistent trend in the thinking of the people of Penang which is not easily named, but discerning it helps explain why civil society activism is so strong in a place that at the same time is renowned for being languidly contented. Much has … Continue reading →

Editorial-cum-book review: Francis Loh Kok Wah, Cecilia Ng and Anthony Rogers: The Xaverian Journey: The Story of a Lasallian School in Penang, Malaysia 1787-2019. Pulau Pinang: Southbound. 2019. I AM A Xaverian, and silently (until now at least) I have been very proud of that fact. Not proud in the sense of “My school, right or wrong”, … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, For CNA Commentary, 2 November 2020 PENANG: Using legalist or technical language to explain Malaysian politics in the significant and tumultuous year of 2020 is not really going to capture the essence of what has been unfolding over the last eight months. A longer historical vantage point, coupled with the immediate recognition … Continue reading →

Identity politics cannot end happily. Since the “Us-versus-Them” game is a cynical exercise in exclusion on the one hand, and inclusion on the other — both done through essentialist myth-building and through the dismissal and denial of factors that stand in the way — desperation and defensiveness become its default sentiment. Historically, the worst cases … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG; For THE EDGE MALAYSIA, 28 Sept – 4 Oct 2020. Is the Covid-19 pandemic the third nail being hammered into the coffin of globalisation? While the historical process connecting all of humanity under one economic umbrella cannot be stopped, it can be redirected where its decisive dynamics and its major actors … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG. Penang Monthly Editorial, October 2020 AT ITS MOST basic level, literacy is about the ability to read and write. But reading and writing is a goal to an end. It was to get us educated. Literacy leads us into a world of endless knowledge – and communication. Literacy as a measure … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG There is something strange about the word “transit”. We assume that a child, for example, will someday grow—transit—to become a mature adult, and not remain psychically a child albeit in physical adult form. At the same time, we do know that all too often, physical adults do continue acting like children … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for September 2020, Penang Monthly. AS EXAMPLES INCREASE of countries getting new spikes in Covid-19 cases, and as some sustained green zones in Malaysia, like Penang, start turning yellow, it is understandable that the public begins to worry, and to take the SOPs more seriously again. Takeaways from restaurants seem … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for The Edge Malaysia, 2-9 August 2020. Now when Covid-19 is on the loose and the movement of the public, practically throughout the whole world, is controlled, traced and monitored, in principle every moment of the day whenever an individual is out and about, the very notion of public space becomes … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly Editorial, August 2020 THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS that causes Covid-19 has been going about its deadly business for six months now. To date (July 10, 2020), 12,414,853 people have officially been infected by it, and since the first week of May, the seven-day moving average for deaths per day globally … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 28 June 2020. WHAT MAKES THE Covid-19 pandemic so very different from other present-day crises that we read about is that, not only does it affect every human being on Earth, it affects them in a painfully immediate and an exasperatingly tenacious fashion. This is not a … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Cover story, Penang Monthly, July 2020 DISASTERS – natural or manmade – tend to affect a limited geographical area. A typhoon cutting across the Philippines, like Typhoon Vongfong in May this year, may devastate thousands of lives but humans living elsewhere will know nothing about it apart from what they read … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial, Penang Monthly, 2020. THERE ARE MANY levels to a crisis. What is sometimes called a crisis is often merely a serious problem. Personally, I would prefer that the word be reserved for when the resolution of the difficult situation signals structural and irreversible change. By definition, one cannot come out … Continue reading →

EAST ASIA FORUM Author: Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Institute, 6 June 2020 Pundits are comparing the COVID-19 pandemic to the ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1918 to tease out lessons for how to combat future pandemics. US President Donald Trump stands during a news briefing on the administration’s response to COVID-19 in Washington DC, United States, 21 … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for Crisis Managment, Penang Institute, 19 May 2020. Read here

By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly Editorial, June 2020 THE NOTION OF “Rights” is as close to the essence of politics as one can come in a word. This is because “Rights”, like “Respect”, are earned, not granted. The loser in a political struggle may maintain the illusion that he is granting rights to the … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for The Edge Malaysia, 1 June 2020. Governance in Malaysia suffered a double whammy when the country went through a parliamentary coup that saw an insecure government take power on 1 March just in time for radical measures against the spread of Covid-19 to be put in place nationwide. In having … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly Editorial, April 2020 THE PENANG STATE Government has adopted “Next Normal” as the working term to denote the immediate post-Covid-19 era. This is exciting in that it proposes that normalcy in the coming years should be perceived as dynamic – and therefore continuously transitional – rather than static. The … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, in The Edge Malaysia, 26 April 2020 There were forewarnings that something like the COVID-19 Pandemic would hit the world; and yet, it came as a big surprise to most governments. To those that did act early, it was still too little and too late in most cases. The virus was … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, April 2020 Editorial, Penang Monthly. IT IS STRANGELY hard to decide what a sport is; and when we do settle on a definition, it is only acceptable if we do not consider the many forms of human activities – usually from other cultures and times – which we therewith have excluded. … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for The Edge Malaysia, March 30, 2020 Malaysian politics is largely racial. It is racial to such an extent that religion is popularly connected to race. And so, the greatest challenge that the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government faced when it took power in May 2018 was in developing and propagating for … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, in HESB (Higher Education in Southeast Asia and Beyond) March 2020 ISSUE #07: pp.13-15 Globalisation’s Historical Consequence The atypical ambition to make human development sustainable would not have come about in our time, if not for the pervasive sense we all feel that human insatiability has gone too far. Human interference—or … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for TODAYONLINE, Singapore. 9 March 2020 If Malaysia’s new government under Muhyiddin Yassin is a solid one, then one could perhaps begin declaring a new era in the country’s politics.  But it is not, and it in fact depends heavily on parties like the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) and the … Continue reading →

Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly editorial, March, 2020 ENTREPRENEURSHIP. THIS IS a word more used than understood. But it is a word that is hugely popular today. It connotes some psychological quality that we wish that our young people have more of today, something akin to innovativeness, adaptiveness and creative. And there does not seem … Continue reading →

Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on March 2, 2020 – March 08, 2020. Power structures are often perceived in the form of a pyramid. Where the number of inhabitants at each level is concerned, then yes, a hierarchy is clearly and understandably modelled as a pyramid, presented as a structure with a … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG for TODAYONLINE, 2 March 2020 Muhyiddin Yassin has emerged as Malaysia’s eighth prime minister after a week of dramatic twists and turns among parliamentarians. He emerged the winner thanks to the coming together of three of the five Malay-based parties in the country, along with a coalition of Sarawak parties called … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for TODAYONLINE, Singapore, 26 FEBRUARY, 2020 The grab for power attempted over the period of Feb 22 to 24 at Malaysia’s centre of power was a totally elite enterprise. It was a game of numbers among parliamentarians done behind locked doors. This caught everyone not involved in the plotting by surprise. … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng for CNA Commentary, 25 February 2020 PENANG: A coup d’etat attempt of sorts took place between Friday (Feb 21) and Monday. What unfolded by the end of Monday was that Dr Mahathir Mohamad had resigned as prime minister, only to become interim prime minister at the request of the Agong. This … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG for THE EDGE MALAYSIA 27 January 2020 The dimensions for conflict perpetually vexing this strange political creation that the world knows as Malaysia are many. And they often go unmentioned — even unidentified and therefore unmanaged. There are various reasons for this. First, to state the obvious, racialism, noted in the … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for Penang Monthly, February 2020 February, 2020 “CREATIVE INDUSTRIES” is an infuriating term. Why it is so difficult to get a firm handle on it is that it epitomises the postmodern nature of our times, challenging not only a range of notions associated with “modernity”, but also connoting socio-economic and … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 30 December 2019 With disruptions in major industries changing the structure of daily economic life, all of us should sense very clearly by now that the education industry — if you will allow me to call it an industry — is a ripe fruit that is about … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly editorial January 2020 In a rural setting, public spaces lie between households. These are spaces shared with neighbours. And as you walk out of the village centre, either up the hill, into the fields or down to the riverbank or the coast, Nature’s presence begins to dominate and you … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly Editorial, December 2019. Not many peoples in the world discuss what they want for dinner while eating lunch. Malaysians do, and we like to laugh about that fact – taking it to mean that we are down-to-earth, we are immediate and caring, and we distrust abstract matters. We also … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 2 December 2019. The atypical ambition to make human development sustainable would not have come about in our time if not for the pervasive sense we all feel that human insatiability has gone too far. Human interference — or disruption, to use a fashionable word — with … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG. Penang Monthly, November 2019. There are tipping points. Key instances past which the world changes. The effect is often immediate, shocking and irreversible. And then there are changes that happen at a seemingly glacial pace, some lasting so long that a human can live his whole life and not notice them. … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for THE EDGE 27 October 2019. For Malaysian politics to transcend the primacy of identity and move on to policymaking that is truly constructive and progressive, in the building of a country that is socially harmonious, morally proud and economically influential, there are at least five aspects that require deep consideration. … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly Editorial October 2019. When a process of liberation has actually succeeded in emancipating a category of humans, subsequent generations should find it hard to imagine the conditions of that subjugation, or even the type of society that allowed it. But then, few liberating processes are ever complete, or are … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for THE EDGE, 30 September 2019 Before Merdeka, the states that now make up the Federation of Malaysia each functioned to varying degrees and in different ways as part of the global economy that we knew as colonialism. But although one could say that the metropolitan centre then was London and … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Editorial in Penang Monthly, September 2019 Penang lies at the southern end of the Andaman Sea, the eastern end of the Bay of Bengal and the northern end of the Straits of Melaka. It also marks the westernmost end of the Malay peninsula. Being so oddly placed, the island has been … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge Malaysia; August 26, 2019 – September 01, 2019. Given the disruptions to school systems being brought by digitalisation and the new industrial revolution it fuels, the biggest concern for governments and parents throughout the world should be to work out what the most effective structural and conceptual reforms … Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW Title: Robert Kuok. A Memoir with Andrew Tanzer (Publisher: John Beaufoy Pub) For his countrymen, the appearance of “Robert Kuok. A Memoir” on bookshelves in late 2018 was a publishing sensation. The life and fate of Robert Kuok, Malaysia’s richest man, had never been properly told or understood. And that was the way … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial for Penang Monthly, August 2019. Malaysians use “Nation building” as an umbrella term for all the processes required to turn a given territory into a secure, prosperous and united country. The contentiousness involved in “nation building” is obvious, and the path towards secure nationhood and a free and happy society … Continue reading →

The Reformasi movement will now be continued by the next generation of Malaysian youths, says Penang Institute’s Ooi Kee Beng. (CNA Commentary, Singapore. 31 Jul 2019) PENANG: In 2018, six decades after the Federation of Malaya first held elections, the Malaysian parliament made two sweeping changes to the Constitution. First, to automate the voter registration … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge, Malaysia. July 28, 2019. In the period between the world wars—or more precisely, in the wake of the October Revolution in Russia and the fall of empires throughout the world; and in the midst of the 1930s’ Great Depression—a search for moderation between the capitalist world and the … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng Editorial in Penang Monthly, July, 2019 What did heritage conservation look like or sound like in the pre-modern age when things changed slowly, and conservatism was not an ideology but a social default; when great changes that eradicated what we would today call tangible and intangible cultural heritage came only through … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge Malaysia, July 1-7, 2019 Introvertedness is so much a part of nationalist discourses that we are often blind to it. This is as true of Malaysia as of any other country, including major powers like the US and China. The resilience of the collective state of mind that … Continue reading →