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By Ooi Kee Beng For The Edge Malaysia, 29 August 2016 Studying history teaches us that the significance of events depends on what span of time and space one brings into play. As in geology, movements can sometimes be so painfully slow to be practically indiscernible, as with the tectonic plates covering lengthy periods of … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge Malaysia, 31 July 2016. The income gap, technically defined, is quite an easy concept to comprehend. One can compare Gross Domestic Product per capita or per household within a given country; and collectively, one can use the Italian sociologist Corrado Gini’s measure of statistical dispersion developed in 1912 … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng For The Edge Malaysia, 26 June 2016. When studying humanity and its history, what one does is construct a narrative. And in that narrative, one distinguishes heroes from villains, outlines territories and peoples, and differentiates steady trends from turning points. Since different choices result in different stories, it is understandable that … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng For the Edge Malaysia, 16 May 2016. Practically all pundits predicted that the Barisan Nasional (BN) in Sarawak, headed by the PBB under the leadership of Chief Minister Adenan Satem, would win big in the Sarawak state election held last Saturday, 7 May. They were right, no surprises there. What was … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng For The Edge Malaysia, 27 April 2016 In an age in which we constantly assert the Paramountcy of the Law and in which we proclaim equality before the law, we carelessly assume that obeying the law, or at least not breaking the law, is all we really need to do for … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG For The Edge Malaysia, 28 March 2016 The problem with thinking of Merdeka—of independence—as a reboot, and as the beginning of a largely internal process through which pride of place on the world stage for the people and the state is that one becomes rather ahistorical. By that, I mean that … Continue reading
By OOI KEE BENG For The Edge Malaysia, 7 March 2016 This year—2016—is a special year for Malaysia. This is not because of the Sarawak state elections due in April (according to some sources); not because of the alarming economic situation facing so many already poor Malaysians today; nor is it because of the risk … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng For The Edge Malaysia, 25 January 2016. The biggest paradox in Malaysian political narrative is how the call for unity is in reality a call for disunity. This comes about because calls for unity tend to be rhetorical appeals for racial unity vis-à-vis other races. Since all societies today—and Malaysia started … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng for The Edge Malaysia, 28 December 2015. Malaysia has drawn the attention of the global community in recent times, and this has largely been much more as negative publicity than positive. Just last Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution deploring “the deteriorating human rights situation in Malaysia and in particular the … Continue reading
By Ooi Kee Beng, for The Edge Malaysia, 30 November 2015 In recent weeks, the Southeast Asian region has been getting more global attention than it is used to, or is in fact comfortable with. But while governments there have for years been reiterating ASEAN Centrality as the cornerstone of their foreign policy, most of … Continue reading
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