Believe it or not, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has been a part of Malaysian politics since World War II. Thus, his long-awaited memoirs easily drives home the fact that his influence runs deep and continues unabated, over 60 years later.

Not one to shy away from controversial views, he expressed grave disappointment with every one of Malaysia's prime ministers and deputy prime ministers, barring Tun Abdul Razak Hussein.

Studying his words, one also sees that Mahathir was often in conflict with himself, for example when denying the key role he must have played in many failures and controversies. He is also known for his willingness to do whatever it took to remain in power once he had reached the pinnacle in 1981. His deputies never had an easy time, and all of them fell by the wayside. Not even Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, despite being the only one to reach the position of prime minister, could remain safe from Mahathir's assailment.

The stamp of ownership Dr M put on Malaysian nation building is undeniable, and no one today doubts that both the good and the bad from his long period of dominance will continue for quite some time yet.

His 22 years in power were controversial ones, during which scandals broke one after the other, and opponents were at times arrested without trial. The latter actions, he now claims, were against his will.

But his tenure was also the time when Malaysia gained global prominence, not only as an economic wonder and a showcase for “moderate” Islam but also as a multiracial society that posed as champion of the South and the Muslim world as well.

However, after he stepped down in October 2003, the long-term effects of his method of nation building have become obvious. Institutional degradation threatens to be his lasting legacy, and the establishments ruined in his time include Umno itself.

One can thus understand that his memoirs were eagerly expected. Many wish to know how he perceives his own achievements, and even more want to see some regret. Now that he is no longer a politician, can he exercise enough distance from his own past to achieve a credible narration of his life and achievements?

Rumours that snap elections will be called shortly have grown intense in Malaysia. No doubt, these have been floating around for quite some time, and like forecasts of rain, or even predictions about the world ending; sooner or later, the soothsayers will prove right.

I remember the same excitement throughout 2003 about a possible snap election. It turned out that then-Premier Abdullah Badawi did announce snap elections in mid-February 2004, more than a year before he needed to hold polls. As we now know, where he was concerned, that was a bad mistake.

But what is different this time around is that the combinations of elections that can be held are many, and all of them hold different significance for the coalitions and parties involved. In Malaysia, state elections do not need to be held at the same time as parliamentary elections.

Traditionally, the two tiers of elections were conducted simultaneously, because few state assemblies were outside federal control. In recent times, Kelantan has been the effective exception.

In principle, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) could have held state elections at any time it saw fit. That had, however, never happened for the simple reason that should it hold elections separate from federal elections, all the cannons of the Barisan Nasional (BN) would have been freely directed at it. That was, and is, a scary prospect for PAS.

Holding state elections while the BN was busy campaigning throughout the country at the same time had, therefore, always been a comfortable choice to make.

The situation today is quite different. As many as four state governments are not being ruled by the BN, and although two opposition parties are going through some bad patches at the moment, the BN itself is not as sturdy as recent by-election victories might suggest. Its component members have not been able to attract new members, and that is not an encouraging sign.

Reforms carried out by the BN have been superficial, which indicates that its appeal to urban voters is unlikely to have increased substantially. This means the Prime Minister will have to tread carefully if he does not wish for the result of a snap election to be as unpleasant a shock as that of March 8, 2008 was for Abdullah Badawi.

From 2 August 2011, the name of the research centre that produces this magazine is changed from SERI to Penang Institute.

While there are several reasons for this evolution, the change that it signals most strongly is the realisation that social research in Penang and Malaysia – be this in policy making, city planning, governance and democracy, economics, the environment or history – must embrace the increasingly regionalised character of the arena within which the state and the country function. This is as true where knowledge creation and education are involved as it is in the areas of labour migration and investment.

Now, the freedom and prosperity that independence from colonialism promised Asians following the Second World War did not come simultaneously or equally to all the countries or individuals concerned. Looking back, we see that Asian prosperity on a wide scale could not really occur as long as China and India did not lead the way.

For half a century, National Growth corresponded closely to Income Inequality. In the extreme opposite case of China, policies aimed at extreme egalitarianism mainly only meant parity in poverty.

As long as the two giant countries tarried in economic development, each mired in its own ideological constraints; smaller countries in the neighbourhood had to make do with what they had. Nationalism was adopted as the noblest of human sentiments in all cases. But all knew, as Napoleon Bonaparte did two centuries earlier, that once China – and India – awoke, the playing field would change beyond recognition.

That has happened in our time, and since both the behemoths are stirring simultaneously, the Asian Drama that now unfolds is greater than anyone – including Napoleon – could have anticipated. Nationalism must now adapt to the realities of Regionalism.

The most difficult part of this change is in the public mindset, informed as it often is by notions fuelled by the fears and insecurities that necessarily accompanied sudden nationhood. Soul-searching among Asians in the wake of global financial crisis following global financial crisis in recent times must, to be effective, question the very structure and concepts of their post-independent strategies.

Without such soul-searching, we are doomed to be victims of history's pendulum swings.

Something that increasingly troubles me is the common supposition that urbanites are cosmopolitan by virtue of being urbanites. Not only does that bias attribute what in modern eyes is a morally desirable quality to the mere experience of living in densely populated areas, it also assigns the negative quality of parochialism to non-urbanites.

The thing is, the line between urban and rural is no longer as clear as before, and therefore the association between urbanity and cosmopolitanism – a tie that has been shaky from the start in any case – becomes ever more tenuous.

This overstaying of associative logic is a common enough error.

The connection between urban living and a cosmopolitan mindset was certainly stronger in the old days when city living was clearly separate from rural living. But then again, that may only be so because the meaning of “cosmopolitan” has changed radically.

To start from basics, the term combines the Greek words, cosmos and polis. The first signifies the universe, considered as a harmonious and orderly system, while the second denotes the Greek city-state. The Order of Nature and the Order of Man are necessarily coined at the same time in dialectic relation to each other. And so, the Cosmopolis is born.

Generically, this is the beginning of civilisation. Much of human knowledge derives from this nexus. The constructors of these two dialectically connected orders were the learned – the administrators, oracles/prophets and astrologers of old. They invented scripts, calendars and philosophy, the creation of which in turn endowed its creators with power.

Together with aristocrats who benefited from their services, these men – for they always tended to be men – defined what the original urbanity was. In fact, they went further than that; they actually defined “rationality”.

This was as obvious in the Egyptian or Greek tradition as it was in Indic or Sinic thought. Interestingly, the present Malay term for “country” – negara – is derived from the Sanskrit word nagara that refers to “township” or “being a citizen”.

Indeed, the urbanite of old was cosmopolitan by definition.

But what we mean today by cosmopolitanism is something quite different. Ideally, a cosmopolitan today is a sophisticated person who is adaptive and tolerant, and who feels at home in most places and is not tightly bound by local and national habits and prejudices.

The flurry of Malay organisations making the news in Malaysia bodes well for the country, whether or not these group together extreme rightists, opposition voices, concerned students or professors, or green or human right activists.

The matter has now become too obvious to be denied, which is that the Malay community in Malaysia is like any other community anywhere in the world. Its collectiveness, like anyone else's, is pragmatic and contingent. This is how it should be. They are not an entity whose extremely diverse and individual needs, thoughts and aspirations can be articulated through one single political party.

The myth is broken. What will take its place is a cacophony of noises or a symphony of tunes, depending on one's politics and disposition.

That powerful party, UMNO, is the oldest in the country, founded as it was just one year after the Second World War. It has dominated Malaysian politics to this day, but now rightly fears that it will lose power in the very near future.

When the party started, its slogan was “Hidup Melayu” - Long Live the Malays. Only after changing that to “Merdeka” in March 1951 did it begin to make serious headway into the popular consciousness.

From the very beginning, Malay political consciousness went in many directions. There were pan-Indonesianists, communists and other leftists, monarchists, Fabian socialists and republicans. The British, with their reputation lost through their defeat by the Japanese, favoured conservatives who were willing to work closely with the nine sultanates.

The amazing diversity found in the Malay community - as in all communities - was obvious from the onset. Those more concerned about religious values broke away to form PAS in 1951, while UMNO itself split around the same time when its president, Mr Onn Jaafar, left with his group of followers to form the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP).

UMNO gained the upper hand through cooperation with the Malayan Chinese Association, formed at the instigation of the British to draw Chinese support away from the communists. This coalition managed to gain independence in 1957 for the country after its electoral successes saw the British abandoning the IMP, which they had favoured since its founding.

Like people in most developing countries, Malaysians suffer automobiles not only as a necessary tool for modern living, but as a purported key driver of the economy.

Having a car-making industry supposedly generates an army of suppliers of parts from simple nuts and bolts to sophisticated electronics. The consumption ringgits needed to keep a car running also fuel the capitalist economy, and in the process create status symbols for the wealthy, the new rich and the faux affluent.

Thinking this way, however, left us with epidemic urban sprawl and a sorry lack of good public transport. This is a trap that will take us a long time to get out of, if at all. Governments overseeing developing economies tend to consider themselves cornered into building more and more miles of motorways to feed the voracious car.

Dependence on the automobile – worshipping the car – has filled society with monuments dimensioned for speed. Or more correctly, urban space today outside of buildings is largely occupied either by tarred roads to handle hurrying cars, or by tarred rectangular surfaces for these cars to rest between journeys.

Car parks, car lots, parking houses, slip roads, motorways, expressways, highways, roads, roads and more roads, define modern human space.

Where does the human dimension fit into all this? The human body is the size it is, and it moves at the speed it does. What the automobile has done to humanity is to turn space into distance. We move from Point A to Point B. In between lies merely expanse which has to be traversed for the occasion. To make that traversing more efficient, the pedestrian has to be ignored, and often turned into jaywalkers.

That is the legacy of the automobile. The spot we stand on; the air we breathe; the sounds we hear; the smells we suffer; even the deaths we die; bow to the booming and zooming iron carriages that jam the tarmac that covers the ground on which we live our lives.

Solutions?

Well, long-term ones are hard to picture. For one thing, governments, developers and planners would have to stop kowtowing to the automobile. Instead of supplying the automobile with tarred roads, which is an endless project, the car would need to be tamed and knocked off the developmental pedestal.

It has become more and more palpable to scholars that the geography of a place, with attendant peculiarities of terrain, climate, water supply, transport, flora and fauna, as well as the nature of adjacent regions, goes a long way towards explaining human history. Southeast Asia – and Penang – is no different.

Continental conditions create polities and mindsets that vary remarkably from those found in maritime and riverine areas. Despite the nation-state straitjacket that territories making up the Federation of Malaysia are today forced into by historical contingencies, the underlying socio-economic structure and primary acculturating forces instigated by our archipelagic geography shine through quite clearly.

Renowned Southeast Asianist Anthony Reid, when studying what he termed the “Age of Commerce” in the region, namely 1450 to 1680, found that cities of that period had a distinctive character:

1. They were culturally extremely diverse, and comprised of distinct quarters for many different groups;

2. Their population density allowed for thousands to gather for festivals and other celebrations;

3. The benign and generous environment produced leisure classes that put substantial resources into performing arts.

Urbanized cultural diversity proclaimed through yearly festivals and rituals was the given state of affairs.

Such urban diversity is sometimes attributed to the “archipelagic-ness” of the region concerned. Most notable are the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Such a tendency in places like the Baltic Sea or the Yellow Sea is probably mellowed by the long and cold winters.

During the “Age of Colonialism”, which for the English started with the settling of Penang in 1786, trade routes were secured and cultural walls constructed to serve and protect the interest of each colonial power.

The adjacent civilizations of India and China which framed and influenced the region in between them were slowly overshadowed during this period, especially where economics and philosophy were concerned.

As colonialism matured, cultural diversity began to be considered anomalous and not as normal. The modernist habit of perceiving nations, races, religions and other human categorizations as essential entities began to spread in the region, often because of colonial and administrative expediencies. This configured what is certainly the strongest legacy that colonialism left behind among its victims – a strong sense of passiveness and defensiveness (the latter expressed as nationalism).

Elections are on the way, and an endless stream of promises will be forthcoming. The good thing is that Malaysians are such a politically savvy people – and this is paradoxically a sad reflection on the state of politics in the country's recent history – that they will in most cases be able to tell a sincere promise from a blatant lie. But that ability is not good enough if the country is to mature further.

No doubt, the country now has a proper opposition; a government that knows it has to respond to rising demands for reform; and a civil society in the form of the Bersih movement for clean and fair elections, which has brought a sense of growing empowerment to the general public.

But for real change to come, the sense of being accountable among politicians, and what that accountability can mean for their personal career if the law is properly followed, must be sharpened. And the people who can hurry that process along are voters and social activists, not only other politicians.

Being politically perceptive is one thing, but being nevertheless passive despite that has, over the decades, spawned a psyche of skepticism, if not cynicism, among Malaysians. This passiveness in the ruled encouraged arrogance and ignorance in the ruler.

Thus, this unhappy balance is most effectively unhinged by the ruled. The rulers may tweak but only the ruled can reset the system. Putting constructive demands on politicians becomes the responsibility of the citizen. Being lied to is not all right; being manipulated is not all right.

What is at stake here is the future dignity, not only of the individual citizen but also of the country itself. The nation-building process is far from over, and if there is anything that other cases throughout the world have taught us about nation-building, it is that it occurs in stages. This means that one has to expect stages of radical change to be followed by periods of conservative politics, and vice versa.

This staggered process starts with the physical integrity of a country. Thus, securing and defining borders is the initial priority, taking place alongside the wild need to decide what is local and what is alien, and to understand what belongs within and what needs to be expunged.

With Myanmar opening up faster than anyone ever expected the question how ASEAN is to develop as a community in the near future gets ever more interesting.

“A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” is of course a saying that holds especially true for an organisation with 10 disparate members and which is given to unanimous decision making.

Ever since Myanmar joined in 19997, it had been considered ASEAN's stepchild – going its own way, recalcitrant and disliked by neighbours near and far.

But ASEAN stay relatively loyal to its family member, mainly because it had no choice. But that patience seems to have paid off, and Myanmar has become the prodigal son returned to the fold.

How much humble pie it will eat is anyone's guess, but the recent election of Aung San Suu Kyi and her party into parliament bodes well for the country and ASEAN.

It also brings us to the critical issue of how ASEAN's viability and wellbeing are dependent on the state capacity of its members.

That is also another way of saying that ASEAN's progress as a community is dependent on the decolonizing cum nation-building process in each country syncing with each other.

ASEAN as a community has capacity to act only if its member-states are politically stable and economically developing. This basically means that each of them must reach a point where it feels confident enough to cooperate and compete regionally, not to mention globally.

To the extent they don't feel that confidence, their governments take measures to isolate, if not the country's whole political economy, then at least selected and strategic parts of it.

A case like Myanmar clearly had not felt it could handle foreign challenges when its own sense of unity and community was in question. All across ASEAN, we see that its members adopted different combinations of openness and protectiveness to facilitate its development and defend itself.

These combinations do change, as we have seen in the case of the Indochinese countries. Whether or not these comprehensive measures were or are beneficial, well-advised or outmoded, the issue is still about a fear of outside forces overwhelming weak internal forces. This fear belongs within the scenario of colonialism and its successor, globalisation. This fear is certainly not an invalid one.

Just when things were starting to look up for Malaysian Premier Najib Abdul Razak and the ruling Barisan Nasional, come disturbing reminders to voters that the essential nature of the UMNO-controlled ruling coalition has not changed.

Although Mr Najib's 1Malaysia initiative and economic reform documents such as the Economic Transformation Programme and the Government Transformation Programme may have won him some support, they do not go so far as to promise betterment of governance or the diminishing of racialism in governance that voters had been demanding.

Be that as it may, the BN has been patting itself on the back after winning five by-elections in a row, the latest being the twin polls on March 6 in Merlimau in Malacca and Kerdau in Pahang. The last two victories were largely expected, but still, a victory is a victory. And within the government's adopted strategy of “small reforms but big spin”, that is encouragement enough.

However, Mr Najib's achievement over the last months is not so much in the winning of by-elections or in using foreign consultants, as in managing to keep old and new controversies from reminding voters of the reasons they deserted the government throughout the northern states three years ago. Furthermore, the ongoing sodomy trial against opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has kept the latter disoriented and his Parti Keadilan Rakyat unable to take bold initiatives.

During the latter half of the Abdullah Badawi period, in 2007-2008, it was the blatantly unequal treatment of citizens by the administration on issues of political affiliation, religion and race, coupled with the unaccountability of ministers and others associated with the BN, which made it impossible for mild-mannered but concerned voters to continue supporting the federal government.

The strategy of allowing the formation of a Malay Supremacy NGO like Pertubuhan Pribumi Perkasa Malaysia to take over the traditional racially strident role of UMNO Youth, while keeping controversial UMNO leaders out of the limelight, did lessen the pressure on the Prime Minister. But without serious reforms, the systemic weaknesses of BN's governance were bound to shine through again sooner or later.

The annual budget is a powerful weapon for the Malaysian government, and never more so than when national elections are impending. Mr Najib Razak's third budget as Prime Minister, announced last Friday, definitely signals that elections are indeed on the way.

Beleaguered as his government must feel - after the Bersih demonstration in July turned into a bigger anti-government event than it needed to be - when major economic indicators are all pointing the wrong way and with only one and a half years left before a General Election has to be held, it is wiser for Mr Najib not to postpone the use of this weapon until next October.

In fact, there is no reason for him to believe that the political and the economic situation will improve over the coming year. Political scepticism runs high in Malaysia and even his recent initiative to repeal the unpopular Internal Security Act (ISA), to lift three declarations of emergency and end the requirement for annual renewal of printing licences, was given a lukewarm reception.

What the public is concerned with is what the government will replace the ISA with. Few believe the repeal is motivated by a humanitarian wish to increase civil liberties.

After two-and-a-half years as Prime Minister, Mr Najib continues to suffer from a credibility problem, which has been aggravated by his penchant for using foreign consultants for public relations exercises and his piecemeal reform initiatives. PR exercises threaten to overshadow serious policy debate in Malaysia.

Given this political milieu, the annual budget announced last week was expected by most to be full of goodies for as many constituencies as possible. In that respect, Mr Najib exceeded expectations.

Not only will 1.3 million civil servants get pay increases of between 7 and 13 per cent, their retirement age is being raised from 58 years to 60. Cheap loans for first-time house owners making less than RM3,000 (S$1,230) a month are being made available for properties up to RM400,000 while taxi drivers are being given various monetary aids.

Significantly, cash handouts to poorer households will benefit as many as 3.4 million families. That's 53 per cent of all households.

Malaysian Premier Najib Abdul Razak's sudden announcement on Thursday night that he would very soon be repealing several unpopular laws, including the Internal Security Act (ISA) of 1960, should have won him praise from most quarters.

But it did not. Instead, a general wait-and-see sense of disbelief was the common reaction, be it from the opposition or the right wing of the ruling United Malays National Organisation.

Why? Is he not allowed to get anything right? The struggle to get rid of the ISA has after all been an issue that engages wide segments of Malaysian society.

Furthermore, he promised to have three emergency declarations lifted. These are the nationwide May 15, 1969 Emergency, the Sarawak Emergency from Sept 14, 1969 and the Kelantan Emergency from Nov 8, 1977. The first will mean that the Emergency Ordinance that, like the ISA, also allows for detention without trial will disappear. This ordinance was recently used against six members of Parti Sosialis Malaysia in the run-up to the Bersih 2.0 march for electoral reforms.

The Restricted Residence Act of 1993 and the Printing Presses and Publication Act of 1984 will also be reviewed. This will mean that the much hated requirement for annual applications for renewal by the mass media will be dropped.

No doubt, Mr Najib's personal popularity has been dropping badly. This should worry the ruling coalition. After all, since he took office in April 2009, he has consistently been more popular than his party or his coalition has been. A bad dip for him just when a snap election is being planned must be a big worry for his government.

But for the rest of Malaysia, the announcement surely bodes well. Who cares if Mr Najib is being a populist here and is doing the right thing for the wrong reason?

There are grounds for scepticism from the savvy pundits in Malaysia.

Well, for one thing, his own Home Affairs Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, the man who must bear the responsibility for any use of the ISA, was reported two days earlier to have replied thus to a request for clarification on rumours of a repeal of the ISA: “There is no talk about abolishing ISA. Who has been saying that?”

A dialogue about something as serious as regime change in Malaysia must examine at least two vast subjects.

Firstly, a thorough and open discussion about the historical conditions under which the Federation of Malaya, and then Malaysia, was constructed is vital to any deep and practical understanding of the strengths and failings of the political structure as it exists today.

Political solutions in times of inevitable change – as was the case in the region in the 1940s and 1950s – are about settlements between those wishing to cut losses and those seeking to maximize benefit. Those less able to make their voices heard were, simply put, left unheard. In such times, negotiations happen under threat, stress and duress; and the solution is a mixture of ad hoc measures and meticulous planning; and a blend of concession and conflict.

In Malaya in the decade after 1945, major actors included shell-shocked British colonial masters recently returned to a scene they did not and could not recognise; the Malayan communists; emergent independence movements stretching from far left to far right led by leaders surprised at their own daring and intoxicated by their apparent historical role; the sultans and rajas, and many more.

The main issues were: The Cold War; the status of the sultanates; the status of immigrants; the nature of the emerging country; the future of British power; and the timing of the transfer of power and to whom. Equally important and often forgotten is the role ideas coming out of neighbouring Indonesia played, and the impact that momentous political events happening in the former Dutch colony – especially the republican revolt in culturally related eastern Sumatra which culminated in the summary execution of aristocrats and others – had on the course of events on the peninsula.

Cutting losses for the British meant giving up the ill-fated Malayan Union almost as soon as it was announced, for fear of a social revolution also taking place in Malaya at a time when the Cold War was heating up. This, the British could not afford.

With the Federation of Malaya in place – an agreement between the British and the Malay leadership, which was highly conservative and supportive of the status quo in comparison to the Malayan Union – the war with the communists could be effectively fought.

In most ways, Selangor and its politics cannot help but set the tone for Malaysian governance in the years to come. The federation succeeds or fails, depending on what happens in this key state.

One could go so far as to claim that the nature of Malaysian federalism itself depends on how Selangor governance will develop over the next few years, how that will strengthen the Pakatan Rakyat in its bid to take federal power, and to what extent decentralisation of power will define Pakatan Rakyat's federal politics.

Geographically, Selangor is centrally situated; economically, it is the richest; development-wise, it is the most advanced; demographically, it is the fastest growing; and politically, it is the jewel in the crown for any party hoping to control the federation. Its industrial infrastructure is also the best in the country.

All this has led to a powerful influx of labour of all skill levels into the Klang Valley over the last 40 years. This is of course reflected in the enormous investments that has come into the region from the private, public and foreign sectors.

Whether Malaysians like it or not, economic growth relies on urbanisation and the free flow of labour, and although what is termed ‘agriculture’ contributes greatly to the state's economy, this sector is based largely on agricultural industries such as palm oil and rubber.

The First Cut

Selangor came into being in 1766 as a sultanate neighbouring an apprehensive Dutch-controlled Malacca. It was centred on Kuala Selangor, and was peopled by Bugis immigrants settled in a region earlier populated by Minangkabaus from across the Straits.

As in the case of Penang slightly to the north 20 years later and Singapore half a century hence, huge numbers of migrant peoples soon moved into Selangor. This trend brought into being stable polities that exhibited strong political dynamism and enviable economic acumen.

It was in Selangor that the Alliance model of politics was born in the early 1950s, which made it possible for the British to convince themselves that they could pull out and not leave their rich Malayan holdings to the communists.

A History of Public Space in Post-Colonial Countries is long overdue. Such a narrative would be a powerful one indeed if it also adopts the fall of empires as its background.

We no longer ponder about the strange phenomenon of the string of empires – colonial or traditional – that fell in dramatic domino fashion throughout the 20th Century. This started with the 1911 Xinhai Revolution of China, which celebrated its 100th anniversary on October 10 this year.

By the end of the so-called First World War in 1918, at least three others had disintegrated – the Russian Empire, The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. The victorious empires and colonial powers – Britain, France and Holland – would chug along for a while yet. The United States, in the meantime, had heralded its coming global influence.

Some of the fallen would rise again, while others would not. In the intermediate spaces, a stream of nations rose to declare independence— by definition, from imperial control. These ranged from countries such as Finland, Poland and Yugoslavia, to Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The badly defeated Ottoman Empire officially ended only in 1923, and in its stead arose as many as 30 countries. This process of imperial disintegration accelerated after the so-called Second World War, with the fall of colonial powers such as Britain, France and Holland allowing for the rise of huge numbers of countries in Asia and Africa. Some of these were as big as empires in themselves, such as India, and some were small, such as Singapore. Malaysia laid somewhere in between.

This imperial disintegration was not a mono-directional affair, however. While the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian ended for good, the Russian and Chinese managed to rise again, to return to the global fray.

Thus, new nations rose on wobbly legs under the heavy shadow of new imperial stand-offs—the so-called Cold War.

Now we come to what I wish to say about Public Space. The existential uncertainty of newly acquired nationhood meant that governments took it as a god-given right to be authoritarian. Nation Building became the only game in town, or countryside. Public Space was an unaffordable luxury.

But as existential fears grew less justified as these polities matured, the inherent tension between state control and civil liberties could not help but increase.

The leader of the Youth Wing declared at the United Malays National Organisation's (UMNO) annual assembly held this week that the opposition parties had been vehemently opposing the Peaceful Assembly Act because they were hoping to create the conditions for widespread demonstrations in the hope that these would sweep away the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN).

But it is not an Arab Spring that UMNO, Malaysia's dominant party, should be worried about.

Despite some seriously bad governing, the country has always had a democratic structure, and despite authoritarian trends, there are more possibilities for venting dissatisfaction than in the Arab world. The political process of change in Malaysia is thus not revolutionary as has been the case in the Middle East. It is reformist, and evolutionary at most, coming in stages.

Seen that way, the new powers given to the police by the new Act, and the curbing of demonstrations this involves, will have the effect of limiting the venting of popular anger, and push political dissent to take less peaceful forms.

Paradoxically, the most successful reform rhetoric in Malaysia in recent times did not come from the opposition parties, although calls for reform echoed strongly after former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was sacked in September 1998 and created a generation of activists. It came from the Abdullah Badawi administration that succeeded Dr Mahathir Mohamad in October 2003.

Mr Abdullah sought to project a liberal image of Islam with his “Islam Hadhari”, an approach that apparently “emphasises development consistent with the tenets of Islam and focuses on enhancing the quality of life”.

His famous slogan, “Work with me, not for me”, evoked enough optimism and confidence to win for the BN more than 90 per cent of the seats in Parliament in 2004. This was a national record.

Thus, there was a time when UMNO and BN actually had the political initiative and dictated the reform agenda. UMNO could have easily denied the brow-beaten opposition of 2004 any chance of mounting the successful offensive that in 2008 saw five of 13 states being lost by the ruling coalition.

But what we saw instead was a government who got its political slogans right, but whose political will was found to be badly wanting. The success of the slogans made the failure of the policies all the more jarring.

In the days before nation states, polities in Southeast Asia were largely trading ports. These dots constituted the maritime routes along which fortune-seekers of old travelled.

All sorts – those with brains as much as much as those with brawn – went where conditions were most promising for the moment. These could be people who originated in the region or from outside the region.

This is my first point. Migration was the norm in Southeast Asia. From founders of city ports like Parameswara down to the common Minangkabau, migration was a necessity. A voyage to greener pastures was – and is – the best career path to take in a maritime trading region.

The “drain” of people from A to B was a basic economic dynamic. It did not need to be permanent, and it could flow further afield or simply loop backwards. Today, calling this flow a loss of brains confuses the matter badly.

My second point is that the notion of a brain drain comes from the biased perspective of the nation state.

There is no lack of people who are educated by the state, who then move to work elsewhere. The state does not like this phenomenon because it thinks it somehow owns the people it educates, at least for a time. It does not see it as its duty to educate its citizens for their own sake. These people are most easily denoted as part of the brain drain.

But then, there is a huge group of mobile citizens who moved first and then got their skills and their education somewhere else. They would have been more correctly considered part of a Brawn Drain when they left. It was only after they became successful that the jealous state decided to consider them as talents lost. My third point is simply that “brain” is a difficult concept to use in this context.

But my main point remains this, that it was the norm for Southeast Asians to move between urban centres in search of a better future for themselves and for their family. And it still is.

This interview withYB Liew Chin Tong, outgoing Executive Director of Penang Institute and Member of Parliament for Bukit Bendera, discusses his understanding of the tasks think tanks need to adopt in the 21st century. Malaysian nation building has not been an easy process, and one of the negative developments it involved was not only a huge outflow of brains but also the outsourcing of thinking by the government. The latter has left governance in Malaysia in a sad state, run according to knee-jerk reactions and for populist appeal.

Q: Tell us how you became involved in think-tank activities and in Penang especially?

Well, after the Democratic Action Party won power in the state in early 2008, I had a discussion with the Chief Minister, Mr Lim Guan Eng, about the need for a new think tank in the state to supply the new state government with good advice based on good research. This would make full use of the many experts on urban and municipal government who can be found in Penang.

Decision-making is essentially based on advice, which means that it is the duty of all of us to make sure that good advice is available, that sound information is available to the government and to society at large. This is something that I have always been convinced of; that the government needs a think tank; and that the party needs a think tank.

What do you have otherwise? If the input is garbage, you cannot expect the output to be otherwise. If the quality and depth and breadth of advice is good, then decisions can be based on evidence. You cannot work based only on civil service advice.

Once you have alternative advice alongside civil service advice, then you have policy dialogue. In Malaysia, we tend to have the civil service on one hand, and on the other, we have private interests. Of course, we cannot blame the latter for voicing their preferences and lobbying for their own benefit.

What we need is something in the middle – a third force; and that is what think tanks should aim to be. Compared to civil society groups, think tanks have to function more broadly and be more result-oriented.

And so the third Bersih rally has taken place. It cannot be understood in isolation from the political dynamics of the last few years.

The demonstration itself went well, with tens of thousands of Malaysians taking to the streets, many dressed in the yellow T-shirt that has come to signify the nation-wide demand for electoral reforms.

No violence had occurred by the time the organisers, led by former Law Council chairman Ambiga Sreenevasan, told demonstrators at around 2pm to disperse, having achieved the show of strength the movement had wished for to back its call to Prime Minister Najib Razak to ensure that the coming General Election would be free and fair.

Exactly how violence between the riot police and demonstrators began is not clear. Rumours that agent provocateurs were responsible have been spreading.

Whatever the case, the huge April 28 demonstration poses a serious challenge to the Barisan Nasional government, especially since the event received big support from similar rallies held simultaneously throughout the country and by Malaysians in dozens of cities throughout the world.

Taking His Time

As the Bersih movement developed from being an initiative thought up by opposition parties in mid-2005 to a civil-society organisation come July last year, the government has, for the most part, played a reactive role.

Since taking power in April 2009, Mr Najib has initiated many reforms - the most noteworthy being the recent repeal of the Internal Security Act (ISA) of 1960 that had allowed for unlimited detention without trial.

His personal popularity grew impressively as a result but, strangely, without the coalition that he leads gaining much from it.

The problem for him is one of credibility. His predecessor, Mr Abdullah Badawi, was correctly advised in 2005 when he formed an independent commission to help him reform the police establishment. The hopes he raised then were dashed when he had to beat a retreat on that initiative and on many of his reforms.

Mr Najib has learned from this and has taken his time to work out reforms that can be carried out. He has avoided using the ISA during his time in power, but he has also avoided trying to reform the police.

On July 9, the streets of Kuala Lumpur played host to animated engagements between demonstrators and the police. Bersih 2.0, which started out as a simple and hesitant attempt to revive public interest in electoral reforms, became a huge demonstration that captured the imagination of many young Malaysians.

It seized their imagination more strongly than anyone expected, leaving little doubt that Malaysia is in transition.

But what needs studying is what it is transiting away from, and what it is transiting to. The two are, of course, strongly related but what is this widespread eagerness for change a part of, which now pervades the country?

The situation is complicated no doubt but we do not need to go very far back in time to find an answer.

Let us remind ourselves that the long-lived Barisan Nasional (BN) ruling coalition enjoyed its best electoral results as late as in 2004, under Mr Abdullah Badawi. As many as 91 per cent of voters supported him and the honeymoon period that the public gave him as Prime Minister was a long and gracious one. It was only in 2007 that signs appeared to say that a lot was not well under Mr Abdullah.

So what was it that happened? And why is it that the BN has not been able to turn things around since then? It still has a lot of power; why can't it correct itself?

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's recent comment that the problem is not with the BN model as such but with the lack of good leadership, was but the latest and rather desperate attempt to limit the credibility crisis that the ruling coalition suffers from.

After the General Election of March 8, 2008, the country went through an uncertain though exciting period. This was to be expected after the shock results that saw five states coming under the rule of opposition parties and the long-lived BN losing its power to amend the Constitution at will.

The opposition parties immediately had their share of problems - ranging from a serious lack of experience in governing, to sabotage by civil servants unable to distinguish party from government, and the economic and political measures by the federal government to punish and undermine them.