After 15 Rousing Years, the Penang Renaissance Still Resonates Clearly

By OOI KEE BENG, Penang Monthly 15th Anniversary bumper Issue, October 2024

WE ARE AT one of those self-appraising points in time when we—not only Penang Monthly, but also Penang Institute as a whole—stare hard into the rearview mirror in order to orientate our journey forward.

In fact, individually, we do that all the time in life. When driving, for example, in order to stay safe and get where we wish to go, we scan our surroundings on all sides. This is all the more necessary when we are on the move, unlike if we were sitting in a still conference hall. In fact, we do that as pedestrians as well.

So, that’s a necessary habit to have. A good habit to have… predicting future movements based on past movements. It’s how you survive.

Doing is learning, and having learned things along the way, new ways of doing things present themselves— in fact, new things to do, too.

We look in the calendar today, and we see October 2024. It is exactly 15 years ago that the first issue of Penang Monthly hit the stands. Voters in Penang had decided in 2008 that it was time for a change. And that change in the state government would lead, just 10 years later, to the federal government falling. Since then, it has fallen another three times.

In Penang, however, the reform government that came to power in 2008 has remained in power. This has provided Penang Institute, the state think tank, with the continuity and the chance to develop itself into a stable institution whose main tasks today are to do cutting-edge research on Penang, strengthen connectivity among stakeholders of Penang, and enhance the public policy ecosystem in Penang. The last point is of key importance, and is a goal learned from anthropologically studying how leadership and followership work in Malaysian culture, and how segmented and lacking in synergy Penang organisations have become.

Knowing the strengths and the weaknesses of Penang society allows Penang Institute, through its many channels of influence, such as Penang Monthly, to strategise at improving the standard of public discourses, of intellectual interactions, and of inter-organisational activities.

We learned some hard lessons after starting Penang Monthly in October 2009. It was called the Penang Economic Monthly at first, and was sold on magazine stands throughout Penang, as well as at selected spots in KL and even in Singapore. Bookstores soon informed us that we should drop “Economic” from the name; it scared off casual readers, they said. And so we did.

We were producing the magazine in three cities. The proofreading and editing was done in Singapore, by me; the stories were created and collected in Penang; and the design was carried out in KL.

Economic realities—and endless discussions within the Penang Institute board of directors about the magazine’s viability—helped to turn Penang Monthly into a free publication distributed from selected hot spots throughout Penang. We decided that the magazine should simply be a social service to the people of Penang. Meanwhile, the Internet and social media convinced us that the magazine should also go online.

Why such fervour to create this magazine? Why so much work? So much blood, sweat, and tears just to produce a free magazine?

Looking back, we are proud to claim that Penang Institute has been one of the few institutions that consistently understood that the new state government needed all the help it could get, especially from the agencies it gave support to, and that must now support it in return.

But what project have we all been a part of, post-2008? Back then, we called that dynamic a “Penang Renaissance.” Voters were crying out for serious change—in Penang’s international relevance, in its cultural gravity, and in its economic prowess. Under that sloganic inspiration, Penang Monthly found its present shape.

Now, 15 years later, Penang Institute can propound that the passion behind the Penang Renaissance remains strong. In fact, with the many successes we have had in deepening public discourses, in generating information about Penang, in building programmes and institutions, in collaborating with international players, in accepting interns to learn from our work, and in providing policy suggestions through our many channels, that passion has in fact grown stronger, and become more purposeful.

Penang Monthly today calls itself The Voice of Penang. This is both a hope and a vision that becomes more imperative by the day, as we notice how public information and news continues to become more and more superficial, being of fleeting interest in character, and taking the form of click baiting.

Put simply, apart from being a public policy research institute, and a discussion partner for the state, Penang Institute also has a strong journalistic function that does not focus as much on news (we leave that to our cousin, Buletin Mutiara) as it does on grounded information about Penang, current issues and social development.

Reforming Journalism

In that important sense, Penang Monthly is now complemented in its goals of discourse upgrading, knowledge generation, and data dissemination by Penang Institute’s policy publications (namely ISSUES, Monographs, Suara Nadi and South Wing Papers), and by its social podcasts in three languages, not to mention its many public seminars and book launches.

More than ever now, Penang Monthly, a city magazine in essence (think tanks are often too highbrow to produce such a magazine the way Penang Institute does; we do it because we see its potential for public discourse enhancement), is integrated into the think tank activities of its institutional home.

The launching of the Forum for Leadership and Governance (FLAG) Programme by Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow last year offers new platforms for synergy within Penang’s public policy ecosystem. Roundtables to discuss and develop ecosystems are now the order of the day for the think tank, and Penang Monthly, with its all-round coverage of Penang matters becomes an ever-sharper tool for achieving the Institute’s long-term objectives.

As a sidenote, social development is as much about citizen empowerment as it is about progressive leadership. That has been the rationale for the initiation of FLAG. Furthermore, discussing leadership and governance allows for the think tank and the magazine to connect to global discussions beyond Penang-relevant matters.

Most excitingly, the rapid yet organic way in which Penang Institute has grown over the last 15 years has made us confident enough to establish iconic annual conferences and roundtables, together structured to cover as much ground as possible, following the Institute’s belief that trawling the public policy ecosystem for practical ideas is as important as generating ideas by ourselves through internal research.

Going forward, Penang Institute, supported by Penang Monthly as its major publication, will annually hold the Penang Economic Forum to discuss economic trends streaming through Penang. This year’s was held on 25 June, and was generously supported by Affin Hwang Investment Bank. For policymaking ideas in the medium term, we have Penang2030, the state vision that we helped to develop over the last six years. For long-term thinking, with the support and encouragement of Penang’s governor, Tun Fuzi Abdul Razak, we have something we call the Bel Retiro Roundtable. The first was held in November 2023, with 10 esteemed thinkers from various fields who love Penang and who are concerned about its future.

GTLF Plus Talks

Where the arts and culture are concerned, the role that Penang Monthly plays in Penang society is being strengthened by the fact that Penang Institute has from 2024 been tasked by the Penang state government to organise the George Town Literary Festival (GTLF). Started in 2011, this event has always been held in the month of November, and likewise this year, it will be held from 29 November to 1 December.

Inspired further by this, the Institute plans from next year onwards to hold seminars, perhaps every second month, on issues concerning literacy, literature, and language in a series that we hope will break new grounds in public discussions. These we will name GTLF Plus Talks.

Remember that the rationale driving all our activities is the Penang Renaissance and that objective must embrace all of society, most importantly in adult education and knowledge regeneration. Democracy requires that its voters stay well informed, and are able- and open-minded individuals, confident in expressing themselves publicly.

Again, looking back, we do notice that Penang Monthly has taken a path that is partly a response to what readers have been interested in, what writers have been available and what they have been keen to discuss, on top of what choices of subject the short deadlines a monthly magazine must obey dictate.

In summary, our coverage falls to a manifest extent under the categories of Art; Food; Heritage; Nature; Economics; and People. This is not to mention the Statistics that we carry that has made us the go-to site for quantitative information about Penang.

Of those categories, let us now shine the light on some of them which were central ideas already when the magazine started back in 2009. In light of the electoral tsunami of 2008, most of us were convinced that Penang voters had been feeling disempowered long enough, and had therefore voted for “Anything But UMNO.” Thus, the Pakatan Rakyat government came to power practically as the default winner.

Whichever the case, Penang then, along with Selangor especially, stood out as the bastions for an eventual power shift at the federal level. But for that to be viable, many of us thought that change should reach deeper levels in society first. A new sense of purpose, a wider sense of people empowerment had to be built.

Thus, “Penang Renaissance.”

That term expresses something lost and suggests something to be regained, and in novel fashion. Penang had, after all, for the longest time entertained the slogan “Penang Leads,” albeit with diminishing confidence, especially since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 to 1998. It is only now, in 2024, that we finally feel enough optimism to restart and rise again from where we left off. The goal of the Penang Renaissance is the maturing of Malaysia as a nation.

Under Liew Chin Tong’s lead, the new government took over the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI), which had been founded by the Gerakan government in 1997. Instead of having a monthly brief for the Chief Minister to read, we decided to transform that publication into the thicker gratis city magazine you now know as Penang Monthly. The original production team included Yours Truly as Chief Editor, Roz Chua as Deputy Editor, Ooi Geok Ling as marketing advisor and Lim Siang Jin as production advisor.

Since then, the row of deputy editors or assistant editors has included Jeffrey Quah, Julia Tan, Regina Hoo, and now Sheryl Teoh and Rachel Yeoh. A long-time designer along the way was Nic Lee; and our current designers responsible for the recent design changes are Fam Kai-Cong and Kevin Teh.

We highlighted the Arts from Day One with the column Penang Palette, with Ooi Kok Chuen; showcased the man-on-the-street with Day in the Life; chorused important personalities with Penang Profile; revisited history with Lest We Forget and Picking on the Past; and introduced hiking trails in Penang with Peaks and Parks, first with submissions by Louise Goss-Custard, and then those by Rexy Prakash Chacko. There have been occasion columns along the way, such as Creative Industries and In the Industry. There is Statistics of course, and Penang2030 reports, plus For Arts’ Sake… and Voices of USM. Starting from this October issue, we will also be debuting a Lifestyle column for more casual and light-hearted reading.

Food was often reserved as the theme for December issues.

In 2019, Penang Monthly celebrated its 10th anniversary, publishing Peaks & Parks as a coffee-table book, and Month by Month, a collection of the editorials published thus far.

I always wrote the Editorials; 15 years now, and these have functioned as my much-needed philosophical vent. For this, I am most grateful. I learned that a deadline can be one of the most inspiring things to have. Having to say something novel every month has been a challenge I loved to rise to.

All the executive directors of Penang Institute throughout this time had been very supportive of Penang Monthly—as phenomenon, as aspiration, and as cultural icon. Woo Wing Thye took over from Liew Chin Tong and was succeeded by Zairil Khir Johari before I came on the scene. We must not forget the Chief Ministers and chairmen of Penang Institute either, over those 15 years—Lim Guan Eng and Chow Kon Yeow—who provided the financial means and promised the intellectual freedom for us to identify the jobs that needed doing, and the means for doing them.

In a deep sense, my personal unfulfilled aspirations in journalism in the 1970s when I was with The Star and The Straits Echo resurfaced on the think tank vehicle, which I was involved in upon returning to the region in 2004, and to Penang in 2017. For that too, I am most grateful.

Now that we have seen what is in the rearview mirror, we can assertively look ahead—both the magazine and the think tank alike—and seek new synergy, make new connections, think new thoughts and represent anew the best that Penang has to offer the world.

Dato’ Dr. Ooi Kee Beng is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His recent books include The Eurasian Core and its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (ISEAS 2016).