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In 1997, the secretariat for the National IT Council, which is all but dead today, hosted a Virtual Commonwealth Teleconference. It included three nations and seven speakers. The keynote speakers were Dr Mahathir Mohamad; the late Othman Yeop Abdullah, then-CEO of the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDeC); Tengku Azzman Shariffadeen, the CEO of Malaysia’s national R&D centre in ICT, Mimos; and Dr Chandra Muzaffar, representing an NGO.

The external speakers vide video-conference included an African, a Harvard professor, and the president of the European Union (EU). They were early days for video-conferences and most everyone thought we were crazy to try it when multimedia connectivity was not yet stable. Telekom Malaysia backed us and we did it.

Today, the Virtual Commonwealth is more real after the Brexit vote. The UK has voted to return to its older heritage and legacy in the rest of the world, and leave EU to handle their own issues unlike after World War II. UK has basically told Europe to grow up and mind itself; Germany has by default assumed leadership of the EU, becoming the economic anchor for the EU.

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