This volume was first released in September 2017, in the knowledge that within less than a year of publication one of the most decisive elections in the country's history would take place, pitting a prime minister embroiled in allegations of corruption and abuse of power against an opposition which was increasingly fractious. As it turned out the 14th General Elections (GE14) were historic for Malaysia, bringing an end to 61 years of UMNO's rule at the head of first the Alliance Party and later the Barisan Nasional coalition.

As noted in the Introduction the aim of this volume was not to predict the future but to assess where Malaysia stood, politically, economically, socially and culturally, as it looked towards the 14th General Elections. What the Introduction and many of the pieces in this volume highlighted was the stark choice the country was facing between a deepening authoritarianism or a democratic opening, which would largely be decided by the outcome of the election.

Malaysia's General Election

Reflecting upon the political climate in the lead-up to GE14 Kerstin Steiner's piece was one of the first academic pieces on the 1MDB scandal and exposed the lengths to which the government of Najib Razak had gone to cover up the 1MDB scandal and suppress legal proceedings against the incumbent prime minister. In his study of silat organisations, Lawrence Ross was exposing the growing mobilisation of ethno-nationalist groups, through silat martial art, in defence of the incumbent government, as the ‘third line of defence’ of the established order. Ross predicted that an electoral transition could be disrupted by the use of such ‘militant and chauvinistic silat groups’, as had been witnessed in the Red Shirt rallies in the preceding years. Amanda Whiting in her piece ‘Rebooting the Emergency’ reflected upon the re-emergence of a discourse of legal exceptionalism and the use of legal reform to in fact strengthen the power of the state. Thus the introduction of SOSMA, POTA, the NSC, amongst others, served to threaten Malaysian democracy and empower the then Prime Minister. The politics of Islam was also highlighted in pieces by Aida Arosoair and Mohamed Nawab Osman, and Dominik M. Muller.