The Malaysian Insider

NOV 27 — Religion is a problem for PKR. The recent bouts of infighting over Kulim MP Zulkifli Noordin's claims that Malaysia is an Islamic state seem to indicate a party uncertain of its stand on religious affairs.

By deciding not to explicitly censure Zulkifli, PKR has risked alienating the urban, liberal set who are one of its crucial entrenched bases. Most of these people accept as gospel the idea that secular government is necessary and religious government necessarily evil, and have responded to Zulkifli by singing the praises of a secular, liberal, democratic Malaysia.

OCT 12 — I remember being back in school, in my then-still-small hometown of Banting, seated alongside many other little sons and daughters of the land and being imparted with knowledge. Prominent in the midst of all the education and miseducation we received were certain key concepts — embodiments, or so we were taught, of everything that was (and is, and ever will be) marvellous about Malaysia and Malaysians.

AUG 31 — Among the many headaches that Penang’s former Barisan Nasional administration left for its Pakatan Rakyat replacement, Kampung Buah Pala must command a particularly high painkiller budget. As time passes, the hubbub surrounding this small community has twisted and turned so many times that anyone who has paid attention to the issue probably feels like they accidentally wandered into a game of blindman’s buff.

MARCH 9 — It may have been overshadowed by a farcical constitutional crisis and a prehistorically sexist fixation on the bedroom time of a politician, but the groundswell of popular dissent over the use of English in schools — which drew thousands of protestors out onto the streets of KL and prompted the long-delayed reappearance of the PDRM tear gas canister — is one of the most serious conundrums facing the interminably conundrum-infested issue of Malaysian identity.

If Umno’s higher-ups know anything about political strategy — and they do, despite having grown lazy and arrogant over the years thanks to a shortage of potent external challenges — they will be exceedingly worried about this, since it further reduces the credibility of their traditional base message of Malay-above-all.

OCT 8 — One of my most vivid memories of the late former Singaporean opposition leader Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam dates back to 1986. I was waiting in a car, with my mother, outside the dull grey walls of the Queenstown prison, while my grandfather – Joshua Samuel Mahadevan, Jeyaretnam's elder brother – was inside on an unannounced visit.

I remember being in a hopeless muddle about the whole situation; in my five year-old mind prison equated to "bad guy", yet I couldn't imagine my granduncle being anything close to a bad guy.

He was certainly strange: a larger-than-life character, with his dry Gray's Inn inflections and formidable muttonchops, who addressed children with a benevolent formality that always left me weirded-out and thrilled.

But a bad guy? My grandfather often couldn't see the point of Jeyaretnam's struggle; I don't know much about what transpired between the brothers that day in Queenstown, but I do know that my grandfather asked a question – why? Why go to these lengths?