Commonwealth Journal Devote Special Issue to Malaysia
The Round Table, founded in 1910, is Britain’s oldest international affairs journal, providing analysis and commentary on all aspects of international affairs. The journal is the major source for coverage of the policy issues concerning the contemporary Commonwealth and its role in international affairs. The publisher, Taylors and Francis, has made some articles free on its website.
SINGAPORE: Far from advancing democratic change, then, GE13 has served to roll democracy back. This was the view of Professor William Case, a Malaysian expert from City University of Hong Kong, writing in the latest issue of The Round Table, the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.
Case argued that after the GE, though a few UMNO politicians called for reconciliation, they were eclipsed by many others demanding exclusion and punishment of the Chinese community over the Chinese ‘tsunami’ and ‘betrayal’. Further, after their victory top politicians in UMNO found the polarisation they had instigated to be helpful in their attacks on the opposition DAP and the Chinese.
UMNO knows that as ethnic Chinese are only a quarter of Malaysia’s population today, and thus DAP can be contained. In remarks made at the launch of the journal at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Case said he is not optimistic about reforms in UMNO.
ISEAS’s Professor James Chin, the guest editor of the journal, argued that while the opposition used the right strategy for the 2013 campaign, it lost because it could not overcome the three biggest hurdles for opposition politics in Malaysia: East Malaysia, the rural Malay votes and a biased electoral system. His article examines in detail strategies employed by the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (or National Front), and the opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance).
Kai Ostwald, from the University of California, writes that it was impossible for the opposition to win any elections in Malaysia given the current electoral structure. Kai provides data to show that by international standards, the distortions in the Malaysian electoral system is extremely high.
Other contributors to the journal are Professor Farish Noor and Ms Choong Pui Yee from Nanyang Technological University. The Round Table, founded in 1910, is Britain’s oldest international affairs journal, providing analysis and commentary on all aspects of international affairs. The journal is the major source for coverage of the policy issues concerning the contemporary Commonwealth and its role in international affairs. The publisher, Taylors and Francis, has made some articles free on its website.
Editorial: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2013.857170#.Uq7LasQW18E
Farish Noor: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2013.857144#.Uq7MOcQW18E
James Chin: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2013.857170#.Uq7MZcQW18E
Kai Ostwald: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2013.857146
Choong Pui Yee: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2013.857143
William Case: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2013.857147
