Whether we like it or not, a large part of the political and administrative infrastructure that Malaysia has today comes from the British. There is much that is of value in that system, and it is up to later generations – meaning the present one, i.e. us – to be discerning if we are to make full use of it.

But to throw out the baby with the bathwater when one is overwhelmed by nationalist sentiments is never a wise move. China's Cultural Revolution is a most poignant case in point. In Malaysia, this throwing out of the baby has been going on for 55 years, and has been happening in slow motion, making it less obvious. Not only have the country's institutions been slowly downgraded for political reasons, our sense of togetherness has also been eroded.

That is why it is so important for young Malaysians – and I would say for all post-colonial populations throughout the world – to be as learned about their own history as possible, and to be analytical and insightful about their heritage. It is through understanding why things are what they are, that they can adapt inherited structures to suit present needs, and not go into a state of denial instead.

Malaysia is one of the lucky new countries in that its independence did not come at a high price, as it did in countries like Vietnam or Indonesia. There were reasons for this, one of which was that our neighbours were obviously having a hard time throwing off the yoke of colonialism while we in relative peace had the luxury of working out how best to become a new country.

We saw how Sumatra had to go through a social revolution that was both bloody and destructive in 1946. We saw the Indian sub-continent divide itself with a painful separation in India and East and West Pakistan in 1947. We also saw China being embroiled in civil war in 1945-49.

Leaving colonialism behind was never an easy undertaking; and Malaysia, being a latecomer in gaining independence managed to avoid quite a few traps that could have made nationhood a seriously bloody and traumatic affair.

The Federal Government announced its Master Plan for Education in September 2012. As was expected, the general goals sound fine at first glance while the larger problem of implementation – and credibility – remains.

Let me take this opportunity…to add my one-sen worth to the subject of education.

Education policy-making in new nations such as Malaysia is a complicated and conflictive process where different political agendas necessarily fight things out over time. Continuing the imagery of warfare, there must therefore be long periods of deadlock and defensiveness of past policies. This is of course counter-productive in the long run.

At any one time, the first question to ask is: Education for what and for whom?

If for the individual, then education is a human right with which the student can at a suitable pace develop intellectually to his or her best potential, not only where employability is concerned but also where his or her general ability to understand the world for himself or herself is concerned. His grasp of philosophical issues and the generating of knowledge – i.e. developing a scientific mindset – is necessarily encouraged.

If for the State, then the creation of a sufficiently literate citizenry that can participate in nation building and develop the national economy is paramount. But to be realistic, we must realise that the State is always a compromise of agendas, where the solution is never the optimal one. Also, we must not assume that a State always wants all its citizens to be as fully literate and scientific as they can be.

If for private corporations (and this was what mass education in its early years was all about), then education looks quite different again. Training for employment means that schools aim at fostering industrial workers at various levels. Such regimentation was the essence of early nation building throughout the world.

If for the teaching profession, then conditions in schools are likely to be conservative where values and even knowledge are concerned. What was true when these teachers went to school will be taught as true even for the next generation.

If for religious teachers, then we are on another plane altogether, and the end products may not even be what the national economy and nation building in general requires.

A cover on migrant workers raises a lot more questions than we can hope to answer in a monthly magazine. But it is a worthy feat nonetheless. We really need to discuss the issue more openly.

We are after all dealing with a human phenomenon, and the last time I looked, humans are more than mere economic beings.

The basic issue – given how little we can immediately do to alter global economic structures – is that of dignity. When conditions of labour are unfair and uncertain, the labourer and the employer, along with all others involved in the process suffer a loss in human dignity.

Statistics will take us only so far. The indulgence that migrant workers need us more than we need them, and that they are but a temporary fixture in our social panorama, make us ignorant and ignoring of their reality outside of the purely economic or legalistic.

For starters, are they migrants or are they workers? Well, the tough conditions to which their contracts bind them are revealing enough. They are after all labour pure and simple. Tellingly, the length of time they stay in Malaysia does not increase their legal rights, as it would if they were migrants.

The fact that most of them are lowly educated means at least two things. First, they are not always cognizant of their rights; in any case, their economic dependence makes the adopting of a recalcitrant attitude highly risky.

Second, their contact with the world within which they labour is – aside from the dulling experience of their long working day – simplified into keeping themselves sufficiently nourished, sufficiently healthy, and sufficiently rested.

What we see happening before our eyes is a new stage in global production. While governments imagine growth being driven by overspending and the unimaginable excesses of financial players throw real economies into free fall, labour is stripped down to its bare essentials.

Buying labour without taking on the social responsibilities that come along with it was always an attractive option for global enterprises. In colonial times, for example, transporting labour to where it was needed made good economic sense. And so, where Malaya was concerned, indentured labourers were brought in from India to work in rubber estates.

The so-called Arab spring that began with the public suicide on 17 December 2010 of a miserable Tunisian vegetable seller whose cart was towed away by the police is often denoted a pro-democracy movement.

That latter term is technically correct, seeing how it quickly led to the fall of dictators and to popular elections in certain Arab countries.

But the easy categorization of these momentous events as a struggle for democracy, besides reducing human yearning into a simple wish to vote, conceals a profound truth about human despair and political coercion.

Surely despairing for a right to vote was not what the Tunisian jobless graduate Mohamed Bouazizi had on his mind when he set fire to himself.

What was he protesting against? What was his despairing about? What was he wishing to draw attention to?

His poverty? His public embarrassment? The loss of his last chance to have some semblance of control over his own life? Certainly.

His was the final weapon of the weak. His loud death ignited uprisings throughout the region, showing how his situation was common to many.

Such spontaneous and dangerous protests carried out by so many in the face of military force tells us something very profound about the human condition, and it should remind us that democracy is a means only, though to a very important end.

That end is human dignity. I venture that it is the loss of dignity that brings the greatest despair.

What enrages any individual most if not an attack on his or her dignity or the dignity of someone close?

At a daily level, it is interesting to note that anyone attacking the dignity of another is most often deemed to be undignified. This tells us how central it is to our sense of propriety and fairness that we possess dignity, but that we respect the dignity of others.

The golden rule that Confucius formulated 2,500 years ago still holds— “Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you”. We value our dignity and therefore should know that such is the case for other human beings as well.

Of course, social relations are always difficult especially across cultural or class lines, and transgressions are made that are not meant. But that is why we have the word “Sorry”.

Everyone should be stunned by how anti-BN forces over the last few years have been able not only to hold their ground, but also to continue spreading a sense of empowerment throughout the country.

My take on how this has been possible is two-fold. Firstly, we are not really talking about Barisan Nasional versus Pakatan Rakyat. Pakatan Rakyat's parties were peripheral players anyway until March 8, 2008.

What happened that day was a revolt by voters – largely urbanites of all ethnic groups – against abuses of power perpetrated by BN leaders, and against their arrogance. Following such a situation, opposition political parties were of course most able to become the expression of this popular anguish.

Over the following five years, we have simply been witnessing this nation-wide process of despair-turning-into-optimism taking forms beyond party politics. Civil society came alive.

Party politics may have been the immediate expression, but the real change – happening more slowly because it is so much deeper – is the movement away from the black-or-white, us-or-them world that Malaysian politics had become over the last 40 years.

This leads me to my second dimension for describing this apparent tectonic shift. Politics in Malaysia in the 1950s and 1960s were colourful and chaotic. After that ended in violence – though mainly in Kuala Lumpur – race was used to divide the country; religion to muzzle speech; and politics and journalism became the monopoly of the ruling parties.

Attempts to diversify political power and public discourse did take place every now and then. In fact, this seemed to occur every decade or so— 1988 when Tengku Razaleigh challenged Mahathir; 1998 when Anwar's refusal to leave power quietly gave birth to the Reformasi Movement; and then 2008, when urban Malaysia voted for “anything but BN”.

This subterranean longing for a less complex-filled, less racialist, and a prouder and healthier Malaysia had been finding pendulum expression every decade. Like the rising and falling of the lunar tides.

In short, the forces challenging the federal government come both from the periphery and the bottom. And they are part of a deep struggle that is as much a part of Malaysianness as Nasi Lemak.

The results of the double by-elections in Batu Sapi and Galas last week were not surprising. What is surprising is how strong the Barisan Nasional (BN) came out looking.

The parliamentary seat in Batu Sapi was won handsomely by Ms Linda Tsen Thau Lin, the widow of the Member of Parliament whose sudden death triggered the by-election. She managed to attract the same impressive support as her husband had done for the BN in the general election in 2008.

No doubt, incumbency is a powerful factor.

In Kelantan, the state seat of Galas won by the Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) just two years ago by a small margin was lost to the BN by a relatively large margin. This constituency had traditionally been a BN stronghold but one cannot even in this case discount the significance of this achievement.

What plagues the two-year-old opposition coalition, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR)? Without the ability to counteract the electoral machinery of the BN, the PR's steep path to Putrajaya rises into a cliff.

One thing that has always worried fence-sitters is that the PR, being a collection of diverse parties, may not be up to the job despite its attractive principles of social justice and good governance. Better the devil who knows himself than the angel who doesn't.

For the PR to replace the BN is one thing, but what has been a major problem in Malaysian politics over the last few decades has been the rampant centralisation of governance and the economy by a system not known for transparency, fairness or competence.

What the PR needs to sell to the voting population of Malaysia is, therefore, more than a mere need for a change of personnel in the federal government and in Parliament. Aside from better governance, it has to excite the masses with the idea of decentralisation and capture their aspirations for local empowerment.

The big mistake that the PKR - and the PR - committed in Batu Sapi, therefore, was to highlight the BN-versus-PR struggle ahead of the Centre-versus-Periphery dichotomy by entering the fray as an outsider. All it managed to accomplish was share between itself and the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) the same number of votes that had already gone against the BN in 2008. The SAPP's agenda tellingly pushes for greater autonomy for Sabah.

Its very name is magic…Istanbul. All its old names are magic…Byzantium …Constantinople. They conjure images of ancient civilizations, always fighting each other, and sometimes enriching each other. But in the end, they had to merge to leave a skyline that fascinates any visitor to this city; and a cultural wealth that takes any person's breath away.

How does one not love those minarets? They may be somewhat ubiquitous, but they never fail to catch one's interest. How not to be awed by the Blue Mosque, by Hagia Sophia, by the Walls of Constantinople? By the Archeological Museum? By the food?

How does one best describe this enchanting place where northern waters join southern seas, and where eastern paths separate from western roads?

Is this where East and West assemble, or is this where East and West split?

Today, the answer does not seem important. Walking at an end-of-season late summer's day down the famous and fabulous 3-kilometre long promenade, İstiklâl Caddesi, from Taksim Square in the north down to the exciting Karaköy fish market beside the Golden Horn by the Galata Bridge, one is struck by how this sprawling city is Central Asian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean, all at once. It is Muslim, it is Orthodox Christian, it is Greek, and it is Roman. It is imperial.

Of Turkey's 77 million people today, 15 to 19 million live in Istanbul. This means that every fifth Turkish citizen resides in this city. And despite oversimplifying official figures telling us that as many as 99% of Istanbul's residents are Sunni Turks, the profound ethnic mix is all too obvious.

In short, I am seeing before me not only the end product of 500 years of Ottoman ethnic integration, but that of many more centuries of painful intermingling before that. The names of ethnic groups and kingdoms mentioned in the amazing Istanbul Archeological Museum, for example, and who existed in Anatolia and its surroundings read like the Bible and more. Crusaders have been here, Vikings have been here. Huns, Persians, Arabs, you name it, they have been there.

The proud faces one sees are not easy to place. For people living in what is often called a crossroads, they seem to belong so infinitely to the place though.

There is an anecdote told among close acquaintances of the late Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's feared and respected Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister in the early 1970s, that he once in confidence said that he felt he was at heart a greater racist than in his actions, unlike most of his politician colleagues, who were more opportunistic and were racists in words and deeds, but not at heart.

And yet, he was the Malay leader that Chinese Malaysian leaders of his day trusted. In fact, even Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore has often reiterated that Tun Dr Ismail was the only Malaysian leader he had faith in.

As a reflection of the Malaysian culture prevalent during his time perhaps, many of his best friends throughout his life were non-Malays. When Tun Dr Ismail was growing up in Johor Bahru, among his family's closest friends were the Cheahs, the Kuoks and the Puthuchearys.

Dr Cheah Tiang Eam was a medical doctor who was very close to Ismail's father, Abdul Rahman Yassin. Ismail's elder brother, Suleiman, later a member of Malaya's first Cabinet, was sent to the Cheah home to learn English manners from Mrs Cheah, who was an English lady. Ismail was especially fond of the youngest Cheah daughters, who later married the Kuok brothers, Philip and Robert. The Kuoks would be among Ismail's closest friends in adult life.

The painful process of securing independence and negotiating a workable path of nation building in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s seared the ever-present issue of race onto the political foreground, where it has stayed until today. Racial issues submerged consciousness of the interethnic exchanges and cultural hybridisation, which continued nevertheless. Understandably, in many Malaysians, strong ethnocentric emotions were stimulated for a time, something that the ensuing politicking would not allow to dissipate.

What went wrong, of course, when we look back over the last few decades, was that they allowed themselves to be manipulated into seeing themselves exhaustively in racial terms and not in citizenship terms. The political establishment grew to depend on this discourse, and turned it into a chronic pathological state.

The Golf Handicap

Where policy making was concerned, Tun Dr Ismail saw racialism as a technical issue, and not a matter of rights.

Where do litterbugs come from? By litterbugs, I mean anyone who leaves trash, wastes or pollutants behind for others to dispose of. Actually, I mean everybody.

Let us also ask, in what kind of world would such behaviour not matter? Well, conceivably, there was a time in human history when our wastes were of no great consequence to the Earth.

This was a time when we had little to throw away; when we humans were not as incredibly numerous as we are now; when our rubbish was infinitely less toxic and not as long-lasting; and, most importantly, when the world was endlessly big in relation to our ability to intrude upon its processes.

In short, this was during a time when we acted as if the world were flat – flat meaning it effectively went on forever – the world had no end and there was no cliff that marked the beginning of nothingness.

This was psychologically the time of the hunter gatherer, when everything he consumed was easily broken down, and because he never stayed in one place for long, Mother Nature could in most cases heal herself from whatever damage he had caused.

He had the luxury of not having to care – and the habit of not caring – about his own effect on his ecology. So even if he was one who would wander back to familiar places seasonally, the forests or plains would have recovered each time.

When we conceptually move on to the agriculturalist, what we then imagine is a person whose original body of knowledge was about predicting the weather and the movements of heavenly bodies and how these affected him. He had to nullify the whims of Nature, and he had to irrigate or drain his fields to suit his crops. He had to think in ecosystemic terms, even though on a geographically limited scale.

And then we have the city dweller, whose understanding of cycles and of nature in his daily life is highly fragmentary. He is the spoiled being who does not have to hunt for his food, or grow his own crop, or catch his own fish, and therefore, does not have to experience the consequences of his daily actions.

The passing of Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu in November last year threw a challenge to all serious scholars of Malaysian history.

Not much has so far been written about him. No doubt most books on the country's political history do mention episodes such as his successful challenge against Tan Cheng Lock in 1958 for the presidency of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA), his failed attempt to gain extra seat allocations from Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1959, the triumph of the Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia in 1969, him leading the party into the Barisan Nasional in 1973, and the Penang economic miracle that he facilitated in the 1970s and 1980s. But further details are rare.

Aside from the need to uncover details, a proper analysis into Tun Dr Lim's life is required for several weighty reasons. His political life was after all impressively long—at least 40 hectic years; and through it all, he always played a major role.

His struggles reflected in no uncertain terms major interrelated dimensions of Malaysian politics which are as relevant today as they had ever been.

Hastened Democracy

For one thing, the complications surrounding an electoral system that was put in place only when colonialism was no longer a viable option, and which had to evolve under great pressure from British haste to withdraw, inter-ethnic tensions and the communist insurgency, were all too evident. The immature democratic culture, along with the social diversity, saw the growth of a strong tendency towards consociationalism and coalition building.

The need for Malayan leaders of that time to arrive at a quick solution that showed sufficient promise for political stability, inter-ethnic compromise and effective anti-communism saw the innovation that was the Alliance Model being triumphant.

Dr Lim was involved from the very beginning in Malaya's electoral development, when his Penang Radical Party won the first ever municipal election ever held in the country. This was in George Town in 1951. By 1955, he had joined the MCA, and had become its president by 1958. The Alliance Model, constructed for the purpose of gaining independence, had the perpetual problem of seat allocation among its members. This was clearly seen in Dr Lim's attempt to increase the MCA's share. He failed, and soon had to leave the party.

Yes, it is time for change in Malaysia. And with the advent of church burnings, time may be running out.

But at the same time, what is it that is to be changed; and why only now? The two questions can be properly answered only if answered together.

To start with, let us look at the immediate conditions. The electoral results of March 8, 2008, were a direct though largely unanticipated response to the steady deterioration of accountability in government, the rising income gap, and the flagrant undermining of the country's once reputable institutions.

The opposition parties managed to capture the mood of the times, and after their electoral victories, they have allowed the success of their campaign slogans to generate their policy arguments. This is the superficially obvious state of affairs.

The second dimension of dynamic change has to do with the present state of the global wealth structure. The crisis that has hit the world, starting with irrational American consumption patterns and the adulation of greed on Wall Street, holds great significance for the future pattern of Penang's – and Malaysia's – economy.

For 2009, Malaysia enjoyed a trade surplus with the USA of US$10.5b, which is more or less the level reached in 1998, just after the financial crisis. Though substantial, it had dropped from US$17.8 billion the year before. That was in the wake of a fall of US$2.1 billion from 2007, which in turn had dropped US$3b compared to 2006. This can be compared to the increase of US$6b between 2004 and 2005, and US$2.8b between 2003 and 2005.

With the structure of the world economy changing rapidly, and with China, India, Vietnam, etc. being responsible for so much of global economic growth, it is imperative for Penang – and Malaysia in general – to shift focus and consider how they can meet the new needs of Asia's nouveau riche, and attract Asia's impatient investment capital.

Simply concentrating on supplying the increasingly isolationistic markets in the West does not hold the promise it did many years ago.

Introduction

Malaysia's Parliament has to be dissolved by the end of April 2013, following which Malaysians must go to the polls within 60 days. Nothing significant about that, except that this 13th general election is a critical one which will decide how the country's politics will develop in the coming decade.

A two-party system is now in place, thanks to the spectacular results of the 12th general election five years ago which brought opposition parties to power at the state-level. Of the many reasons ventured for this shift, the one that cannot be ignored is the impressive rise in social activism. A strong sense of empowerment has come to the fore, which the ruling coalition continues to have a difficult time managing.

The consolidation of oppositional forces in general, not only party-based ones, has been extraordinary. This makes the status quo untenable; something that the government of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak realizes but is unable to accept wholeheartedly.

This is partly because the social activism of the 21st century is very differently configured, compared to earlier decades.

Unity Despite Diversity

Resistance to the central power in Malaysia has more often than not, happened along racial and religious lines. This is not strange, given the extreme multicultural nature of its population as well as the nature of the conservative compromise between the retreating British colonialists and the elite ostensibly representing the various ethnic groups.

The major security concerns that surrounded the birth of the country as the Federation of Malaya in 1957 were communism and communalism; as well as external threats posed especially by Indonesia. By 1965, what emerged after the dust settled following the change in government in Indonesia, and the departure of Singapore, was a parliamentary democracy that was also a nominal 13-state federation where nine states were headed ceremonially by royal houses. Geographically, the country is now divided into two parts by the southern end of the South China Sea. In simple terms, all the parts of archipelagic Southeast Asia that the British had controlled, excepting Brunei, which chose to stay out, and Singapore, whose inclusion in 1963- 65 proved untenable, came together to form one complex country.

On 12 January 2013, an estimated 100,000 Malaysians managed to pull off the latest in a series of demonstrations in the country's major city, Kuala Lumpur. This time, it went practically without a hitch.

There were none of the clashes with police that had marred the holiday atmosphere that the two most recent mass rallies – Bersih 2 on 9 July 2011 and Bersih 3 on 28 April 2012 – nevertheless had.

It has not escaped the notice of Malaysia watchers that these congregations have been not only peaceful in essence; they expressed most poignantly an optimism that carried with it a sense of disbelief. This disbelief is accompanied by a sense of purpose as well, of course. It has all happened rather suddenly—thus the incredulity. And peacefully—thus the hope.

In future years, when enough time has elapsed and enough changes have taken place in the country, commentators will connect these rallies more tightly together than we do today; and they will perceive what in effect is a history of how public space – restricted for so long by draconian laws and by threats of racial violence – was gradually regained in Malaysia.

The fact that the government of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak quickly claimed that the rally went so smoothly was due to the success of his reforms, testifies clearly that even the establishment knows what needs doing.

With this, the risk of street violence in the event of an opposition victory in the coming elections should be small. The peaceful demonstration strongly implies that a peaceful change of government is totally possible.

In most cases, when individual desperation explodes into action, there is no sense of long-term purpose, only an immediate release of frustration.

Such was the case in Tunisia when the vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on 17 December 2010 after being deprived by police officers of his only means of livelihood.

In Malaysia, things have not been even close to being as desperate for most people as was the case for this poor Tunisian. The torment has instead been a psychological one; one that was slowly eroding the individual's sense of justice and dignity. For that is what institutional racialism does, when applied for so long. It diminishes the soul.

The showdown scheduled for Saturday between the Malaysian government and the group of non-government organisations calling itself Bersih 2.0 has simmered somewhat.

What would probably have been a long peaceful march by 100,000 Malaysians of all races, dressed in royal yellow T-shirts, towards the palace to hand over a memorandum seeking wide-ranging electoral reforms, will in all likelihood now be a rally taking place inside a stadium.

This compromise was reached after a momentous meeting between Malaysian King Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin and three leaders of the non-government organisation (NGO) coalition: Front person Ambiga Sreenevasan, steering committee member Zaid Kamaruddin and national laureate A Samad Said. The aged and highly-respected A Samad Said is being investigated under the Sedition Act and the Police Act related to unlawful assembly. His offence was a recent recital of a poem at a Bersih 2.0 event.

But, whether the stadium rally happens peacefully will depend on how the Malaysian police chooses to handle the issue over the next few days. An application for the demonstration will still be required of Bersih. It is also vital that Prime Minister Najib Razak, whose suggestion it was initially to move the rally to a stadium, show some national leadership and get the Home Ministry and the police to simmer down as well.

If the Home Ministry continues to feel that the compromise is a victory for the government, then one may expect more flexing of muscles from the beleaguered and agitated police force. In the weeks prior to the march, the Home Ministry and the police had been taking messy Draconian measures to intimidate the public and discourage supporters of Bersih 2.0. These included roadblocks, arrests of members of the Parti Sosialis Malaysia on the ludicrous suspicion of trying to revive communism in the country, the detention of people wearing yellow shirts and the holding and questioning of opposition leaders and activists.

For now, calls for the release of detainees have gone unheeded, and the police has been causing huge rush-hour traffic jams outside KL with roadblocks at entrances and exits to major highways. This is highly reminiscent of the days before the first Bersih rally in November 2007 and the Hindraf Hindu rights march in December that same year.

We can read books on Malaysia's history by scholars of various persuasions all we want. In the end, the solution to the ills suffered by the country over the last half century will have to come from discussions about principles, not about contested facts.

We can blame the British for the mess they left behind, and for the even bigger mess they engineered as their retreat strategy, aimed at protecting their post-colonial interests. We can blame colonialism for forcing the Southeast Asian region – and the entire world in fact – into the legacy of the nation state and the ethno-nationalism and inter-communal tensions that always accompany it. We can also blame the dynamics of global capitalism for moving populations around just to suit the production lines of new industries. And we can blame them for destroying the fabric of so many cultures and civilizations.

We Asians can of course also blame ourselves for not seeing it coming; for being self-satisfied; for putting too much weight on social propriety and not enough on intellectual stimulation; for being excessively prone to collecting and practising superstitions; for being male-dominated; for failing to develop scientific methods of knowledge generation; for being given to traditionalism; and for being subservient to power and for being accepting of hierarchies.

I can go on, except that this blame game will not take us any place worth going to. No doubt, it bestows on us the addictive but sweet soreness of being among History's fatalities, but that's as far as it goes. We remain victims nevertheless, and we continue to revel in the impotent outrage of the passive victim.

This outrage, like most traumas of youth, is essentially aimed inwardly at our own body. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed may be best remembered for trying to aim our bile outwards, but even then he was inexcusably indiscriminate and opportunistic when doing that. That is perhaps the prerogative of youth—to blame everyone but oneself.

As we mature, as individuals and as a nation, we should realise that the best revenge is to live well. By living well, we terminate the impact others have had on us; and by living well, we heal ourselves from within.

It is certainly true that never before in human history have so many been lifted out of poverty as has been the case in East Asia over the last few decades. The suggested reasons for these are many, though few easily agreed upon.

In China, the poverty rate fell from 85% of the population to 27% between 1981 and 2004. An incredible 600 million moved above the poverty line, for we are after all talking about the most populous country in the world. In neighbouring Vietnam, the proportion of poor people dropped from 58% to 14% between 1993 and 2008.

As we know, Malaysia has also done remarkably well. In 1970, 49.3% of its people were poor, but by 2004, that figure had dropped to 5.7%. In 2007, it was as low as 3.6% but rose again to 3.8% in 2009.

Whether or not we agree with the definition of poverty used in all these cases, the statistical trend downwards is beyond doubt.

But also beyond doubt is the widening income gap. And that is going to be the largest challenge the region will have to face.

A quarter of a century ago, the Gini coefficient for China was around 0.3, which was not strange under communism's control economy. But a small income gap without growth was not a desirable situation in the long run. However, after Deng Xiaoping's ethos that being rich was glorious was fully accepted in the early 1990s, both wealth and inequality have been rising.

China's Gini coefficient today is a state secret (a very ominous sign indeed), but observers suggest that it is now close to 0.5. Anything above 0.4 on that scale, according to experts, is a warning sign, and social unrest is to be expected above that point.

Now, one can safely argue that this was part of the Deng's plan for economic development to remedy the ill effects of Mao Zedong's ultra-egalitarian ideology. Deng realized that he had to allow some to get rich first. In effect, his slogan was, “Let the Income Gap Grow”.

The trick now for his successors in this risky plan is to manage the next step—maintaining economic growth while decreasing inequality. A huge income gap is thus seen as a temporary condition which becomes a serious problem when ignored and allowed to continue.

Under the rubric of Nation-building, countries throughout modern times have been struggling to construct institutions that can safeguard national independence, bring economic growth, and create a harmonious society.

Thus, small and new countries like Malaysia have been frantically trying to put their house into some semblance of good order, and play catch-up on as many fronts as possible. It is a valiant – and yes, defiant – project. But the trap they tend to fall into is to adopt a defensive attitude in protection of the often innovative measures taken by their founding fathers. In the process, they also perpetuate the national nationalistic mindset that was appropriate in earlier times.

This navel-gazing – which is what it becomes in the end – saddles later generations with leaders and civil servants who through lethargy if nothing else, are keepers of the past and not nation-builders for the future. It leaves them oblivious to the fact that the race is not so much against time as against further global technological and other advancements moving beyond its people ability to comprehend and utilize. Once that happens, provincialism takes hold and scientific thought is ignored.

So, this brings me to the importance of education—and to the challenges that developing and even developed nations face. What has democratically been an incredibly liberating factor in modern life is the universal access to education. Except among Talibans in Afghanistan, this is now an unquestioned claim.

Nothing undermines authoritarianism the way a good education does, and nothing spurs social mobility in post-colonial and post-feudal societies the way mass education does. Without the enormous investments put into schooling, the huge income gap that now troubles successfully developing countries like China, Singapore and Malaysia would be much worse. Poor kids can beat a path to a professional career and a decent living through education.

However, schooling and education are not static things. As we know, the school system that most countries still use today was actually constructed to serve 19th century industrialisation. [Here, I would suggest readers listen to Ken Robinson's lectures available at http://www.ted.com.]

The speed at which new knowledge is being generated is exponential, and simply beyond imagination, be this in biology or computer science, mathematics or geography.

Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu – if known at all to young Malaysians today – is remembered as a politician who was most active at the state level. He was after all the Chief Minister of Penang for 21 years, from 1969 to 1990.

However, it is far from true that his politics were not national in character. It was only that the political path that his struggles took him along after he joined politics in 1951 was one that was far from straight or predictable, and not easily described.

He was 71 years old when his electoral loss in 1990 convinced him that it was time to retire. By then, he had been in politics for 40 years. Coming from a wealthy Penang family, he showed great promise from the beginning. He performed well at Hutchings School, and moved to Penang Free School in 1932.

When he was awarded the coveted Queen's Scholarship in 1937, the Straits Times informed its readers that the 18-year-old was a “keen sportsman and cadet, holding the rank of second-lieutenant in the Free School Corps, a ‘crack rifle shot’, and was interested in history and geography”.

Following in his father's footsteps, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and when the war broke out, he served with allied troops in China as medical officer to General Chen Chen, who later became the vice-president of the Republic of China.

After the war, Dr Lim competed regularly in tennis tournaments. When the first municipal elections took place in Malaya in 1951, we saw Dr Lim leading his first political party, the Fabian-inspired Penang Radical Party, to victory in George Town. He was thus at the forefront of Penang – and national – electoral politics from the word “Go”.

In 1953, Dr Lim was the only Chinese fielded by the Radical Party, and this was in the Malay-majority seat of Jelutong. He lost badly. The Umno-MCA alliance won in all the three contested Penang municipal seats. Communal-based politics seemed to have found a formula that could gain support, at least for the time being.

Changes had been coming to Sweden for a long time. And ever since the Social Democrats lost power in the early ‘80s for the first time in decades, over the issue of nuclear power plants, the writing had been on the wall.

The message became undeniable on Sept 9 when the Red-Green coalition failed to regain power, handing the Right-of-Centre parties its first retention of power in modern times.

The Moderate Party under Fredrik Reinfeldt managed to win a second four-year mandate at the head of a coalition that includes the Liberal Party, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats.

But what holds greatest interest in these Swedish elections for the rest of the world is the fact that new political dimensions are clearly erasing the classic Left-Right dichotomy and this in one of the few countries where Marxist concepts are still commonly used.

For one thing, the Moderates, once Sweden's true-blue party, has gained ground - and credibility - by styling itself “The New Workers’ Party” destined to replace the Social Democratic Workers’ Party that was the architect of the much studied and much admired Swedish Welfare System.

The Social Democrats are thus looking like one of the many powerful post-war parties in the world which have fallen and which cannot regain power without undergoing a comprehensive rejuvenation exercise. Asian countries have examples of many such parties, including Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and Taiwan's Kuomintang.

Many are claiming that Malaysia's United Malays National Organisation (Umno) is next in line, to which its many attempts at reform testify.

By gaining 4 per cent in these elections, the Moderates are just 1 per cent short of overtaking the traditionally largest Swedish party. But what is also unfortunate for it is that its coalition is also 1 per cent short of a majority.

In order to avoid a minority government, Mr Reinfeldt has either to get the Environmental Party to switch sides, or recruit into his coalition the xenophobic Sweden Democrats - which in winning 5.7 per cent of the votes have come into Parliament for the first time.

The latter would be a very unpopular move that will certainly hurt him in the next election.