Wikibeng

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 →

By Ooi Kee Beng Editorial, Penang Monthly June 2019 Have you noticed that one easy way to look cool nowadays is to carry a book with you? It can sit leisurely in your hand or be lightly squeezed under your armpit. And it should preferably be a thick one. And if you don’t have a … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 6 June 2019. It is not as yet clear that Shared Prosperity 2030 will be the wherewithal for federal policy-making in the coming decade. The chosen goals are socioeconomic — that much is apparent — but building a nation is much more complicated a task than can … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for CNA, 9 May 2019. PENANG: The big debate in Malaysia one year after the change in government on May 9, 2018, concerns the unfolding nature of Pakatan Harapan (PH). No one seriously doubts that it has charted a vastly different path for the country from that set by the Barisan … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG. For The Edge Malaysia Weekly, April 29, 2019 – May 05, 2019. The advent of electric vehicles (EV) offers opportunities for cities and countries to limit and reverse the use of unclean and non-renewable energy sources. But for that to happen, quite a bit of imagination in policymaking and public behaviour … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG Penang Monthly Editorial for May 2019. Women may not all have been born multitaskers, but mothers, whether working mums or not, definitely are. In fact, it may not be possible to define motherhood any other way, which is why we react with such deep shock when we hear of mothers neglecting … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge Malaysia, 31 March 2019. Malaya was born a democracy in 1957. The first general election held on the peninsula had taken place just two years earlier, on 27 July 1955. In fact, the first ever proper election was the municipal one held in George Town on 1 December … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng; Penang Monthly Editorial, March 2019 As the Batu Kawan township comes into being, new hope is raised that the quality of life in the state of Penang will be affected positively, and that the bar for urban liveability will be raised. Being a greenfield project, the area promises to show how … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng. In Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, February 25, 2019 – March 03, 2019. Was the opposition to BN-Umno rule, which led to the change in government in 2018, about corruption, ethnic baiting and deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, and a loss of confidence in Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s administration? Well, those are, in … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on January 28, 2019 – February 03, 2019. Building a new Malaysia must necessarily mean building a new Malaysian. This is because the 60 years that went before, for all its successes, bred dynamics that in the end led not only … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly Editorial February 2019 Computer-generated imagery, better remembered as CGI, has radically changed the movie industry. Anything can now be made to look extremely real on the screen; and we are left marvelling at the cleverness involved as well as the computer programming and power that lie behind this mastery … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, For ChannelNewsAsia Commentary; 5 Jan 2019 PENANG: Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional (BN) government survived the general elections of 2008 and 2013, fending off strong attacks from the Pakatan Rakyat. But then, in 2018, it suddenly fell — at the hands of the newly formed Pakatan Harapan. Certain new elements coming into play … Continue reading →

COVER STORY, Penang Monthly, January 2019 By Ooi Kee Beng It was a Monday, the beginning of a working week and the start of a hopeful time for Malaysia. At 11.10am on May 14, 2018, four days after it became official that Pakatan Harapan had won the general elections, and that it (earlier as Pakatan … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly editorial, January 2019 The digital revolution that in recent years has been pigeonholed as Industry 4.0 in reality transforms modern life in more ways than merely through new products, new production processes and new consumption patterns. No doubt it has transformed the taxi industry and is undermining the hotel … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 30 December 2018. The long-awaited change in government in Malaysia is now a fact, but the question to ask now is, how committed to across-the-board reforms can the new ruling coalition be, led as it is by a 93-year-old prime minister who is scheduled to leave within … Continue reading →

Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly editorial, December 2018E Mr Ong Jin Teong, in his admirable book Penang Heritage Book: Yesterday’s Recipes for Today’s Cook (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2010), noted forlornly that many of the home-cooked dishes that he and his generation grew up with are gradually disappearing along with ageing mothers and fathers, and uncles and aunties. … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, December 4, 2018. Long before Malaya could be conceived of as a nation, politics on the peninsula had been defined by identity. We blame the British for starting it all — excessively no doubt, as an easy disclaimer to please our own conscience. They supposedly divided their … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Editorial for Penang Monthly, November 2018. The basis for human liberty as we understand it today was laid with the advent of universal literacy. When reading and writing stopped being the sole right of royal scribes and religious leaders in a given society, and when vernacular languages – i.e. languages actually … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng For The Edge, 26 October 2018 Toppling a regime that had been in power for 61 years was forbidding, to say the least. But Malaysia’s voters managed to pull it off at the ballot box on May 9 this year. And it was done without any accompanying subsequent incident of violence, … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, Penang Monthly editorial, October 2018 In the age of speedy technological innovations, thinking up names for totally new things that are not created by Mother Nature but by this innovative ape we call Man has been an exciting process. The “telephone”, the “telegram” and the “television” are some easy cases in … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 30 September 2018; and in Penang Monthly, November 2018. One of the greatest challenges that faces a society coming out of a period of authoritarian rule and bad governance is the need to break away from looking to political initiatives and to politicians as the way to … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, for The Edge Malaysia, 1 September 2018 The intuitive conclusion drawn by many that a sea change took place when the government in Malaysia changed hands on May 9, 2018, has its merits. But as in all functioning democracies—and nowadays I count Malaysia among them—a majority vote generally means that almost … Continue reading →

By Ooi Kee Beng; Penang Monthly Editorial September, 2018 When we were cavemen, we lived in caves. And in the thousands of years since then, we have lived in everything else – from lean-tos to tents to log cabins to mud huts to houses and to condominiums. But in essence, we have remained the same. … Continue reading →

By OOI KEE BENG, Editorial in Penang Monthly, August 2018. It is often claimed that traditional Asian ways of teaching encourage students to memorise facts – so-called rote learning. The Western way, in contradistinction to this, it is claimed, is to teach children to think for themselves and to be critical – to be analytical. … Continue reading →

[Published as “Revisiting national history and the significance of GE14”, in The Edge, Malaysia, 30 July 2018]. By Ooi Kee Beng 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 … Continue reading →