New Mandala

New Mandala’s recent post “Crimes against the state: a long lost manuscript” triggered an important question: to whom do we owe our allegiance as citizens – country, the royalty, political party, our race, religion, or individual politicians? The movie Valkyrie (2008) probably answers it best – we owe our allegiance to our country – nothing [...]

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Over at Asia Sentinel, Pavin Chachavalpongpun provides some tips for royal endurance in Southeast Asia:
[T]hese guides to longevity of the monarchies in Southeast Asia do not automatically offer a rosy picture for their future. New factors emerge periodically to challenge the integrity of their rule. Using illegitimate weapons, such as manipulating the legal system to [...]

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Malaysians of Indian heritage are currently in a unique position. Not since the pre-Independence days in the 1950s has their influence has been courted by so many. Sitting imperviously on the proverbial political fence, the average Malaysian Indian voter is now getting very comfortable with the kingmaker pose.
But there needs to be a reality check [...]

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The Malaysian government is again embroiled in a corruption scandal, this time with an estimated taxpayer cost of RM4.6 billion (A$1.53 billion). Rather than implementing reforms to improve transparency and accountability, in the usual pattern of Malaysian politics the government continues to shift blame and shuffle paper. This scandal comes amidst promises by Prime Minister Najib to [...]

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In case you have not noticed, there seems to be a full scale blow-out by Indonesians against Malaysians — and not between the governments but, instead, between the people.
Of course, the countries have long-standing conflicts related to disputed borders (read here and here). Furthermore, abuses of migrant labour in Malaysia (with Indonesians making up the majority of the foreign [...]

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Web censorship regimes in mainland Southeast Asia are a regular topic of discussion here at New Mandala. Of course, anybody who spends time in Burma gets used to the government’s relatively consistent effort to block potentially subversive online material.  And, jokes aside, since the coup of 2006 Thailand has also beefed up resources to clamp [...]

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Malaysia Day  is celebrated every 16th of September to commemorate the founding of Malaysia – when North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak on the island of Borneo (Kalimantan) together with Singapore joined the Federation of Malaya to form Malaysia. It was under intense circumstances that this occurred as Indonesia under the charismatic Sukarno opposed this formation and launched a [...]

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The Barisan Nasional (National Front) has led Malaysia since independence in 1957. As the Alliance Party – which included the Malayan Indian Congress and the Malaysian Chinese Association, it governed the Federation of Malaya (then only constituting Peninsular Malaya) from 1957 to 1963.
Then, in 1963, with the support of local political parties (e.g. People’s Action Party in Singapore) [...]

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Yesterday I blogged about agricultural productivity in Thailand. I included a chart which compared rice yields in Thailand with yields in China, Japan and Korea. Some readers have pointed out, both in comments on the post and by email, that the comparison between Thailand and Japan/Korea may not be particularly informative given quite different technical, social, ecological [...]

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Today, 31 Augst 2009, Malaysia celebrates its 52nd year of independence.
However, instead of reflecting on another year of progress, Malaysians face anxiety as the growing threat of religious and racial tensions spearheaded by UMNO and its proxies threaten to derail Malaysia.
Prime Minister Najib Razak espouses 1Malaysia as his policy – something his party has been speaking [...]

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