Malaysia
After the voting, personality beats policy in Southeast Asia
It has been an unusually intense time for elections across Southeast Asia in the past year with both a stunning upset and more predictable returns of incumbents.
But the striking…
Why Mahathir is unlikely to make Anwar his successor
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s latest promise that he “will not go more than three years” in the premiership is the latest in an ongoing saga of leadership succession…
Mahathir’s tilt to China smooths the way for Beijing in Southeast Asia
In the months leading up to his dramatic return last year as Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad had positioned himself as a strident critic of his predecessor’s approach…
Making a murderer: the assassination of Kim Jong-nam
Two years of James Bond-esque intrigue following Kim Jong-nam’s assassination in Malaysia have fizzled out, with backroom negotiations seeing murder charges dropped against the…
Domestic politics drive Malaysia’s abrupt global court U-turn
Well, that was short lived. With the rounds of applause that accompanied its historic decision to accede to the Rome Statute still reverberating, on 5 April Malaysia announced it…
Analyses
‘New’ Malaysia: Four key challenges in the near term
In the aftermath of Malaysia’s momentous regime change, the new government faces a number of challenges to implementing wholesale political reform.
Malaysia joins the International Criminal Court
On Monday, Malaysia ratified the Rome Statute, making it the 124th State party to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The decision to join the ICC after 20 years of resistance…
Courting change in Malaysia
Malaysia’s political upheaval looks likely to drag on for years. A three judge panel has granted former prime minister Najib Razak a last minute stay in a corruption trial, which…
Spats in the straits between Malaysia and Singapore
Australia has presented itself as a defender of the international “rules-based order” in response to rising challenges facing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea …
Malaysia and China: breaking up is hard to do
Breaking up is hard to do, judging by the Malaysian government’s latest contortions over how to handle a US $20 billion Chinese-backed rail project of questionable economic value…