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Harapan entering a grey area, a year before 2020

COMMENT | As I write this, Malaysia, as governed by Pakatan Harapan, is entering both a festive occasion – marked by Christmas and the new year – and a festering one too. There are five telltale signs of the latter:

  • The tragic death of firefighter Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim in the Seafield temple riots.
  • The 55,000 who gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the rally against the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd).
  • Authorities seemingly forgetting about M Indira Gandhi's missing daughter, and about Teoh Beng Hock's death nearly ten years ago.
  • Close to 15 percent of Malaysia' population will be above 60 years of age by 2023.
  • About 38,000 Felda settlers getting cost of living aid and deposits for replanting.

In any one of the above, Harapan has at best either been silent, or belatedly proactive. Meanwhile, the world continues to change in five ways:

  • US President Donald Trump deciding on two simultaneous withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, signalling the end of American presence in two of the most conflict-prone regions in the world.
  • Russia staying quiet on the pullout of American troops, although this strategic withdrawal is akin to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
  • Islamic State and the Taliban also staying quiet, suggesting a deeper motivation to push deeper into the Western world, or perhaps Asia, to wreak more havoc;
  • China's One Belt, One Road initiative, which appeared to be all but irreversible, has been challenged by the Quads (United States, Japan, Australia and India).
  • Japan, one of the key powers in the Indo-Pacific region, continuing to shrink in terms of population, thus further heightening its insecurity.

These are dangerous times. There are some quaint parallels: the elan of the Vietnam War, when Communist forces pushed forward from the north to south in 1975; the fall of Kabul in 1989; the Russian incursion in Georgia in 2008; and the slow but organic militarisation of South China Sea from 2011 onwards when China, for the first time, referred to the area as its "core interest," a term previously only reserved for Taiwan and Tibet...

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