The great pivot: Malaysia beyond 2020

If in the year 2000, you were to tell 17-year-old me that by the middle of 2020 we would have just come out of basically three months of home quarantine due to a global pandemic and see Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (who became the Prime Minister for a second time and resigned for a second time) and Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim still dominating local politics, I would have said you were mad.

But here we are, heading into the second half of 2020 with exactly that scenario. Instead of being a high income nation with flying national cars and a vibrant Silicon Valley of the East with a globally recognised “knowledge economy” or a united country where citizens have a great sense of belonging and a national identity, we are faced with a stagnant economy, with parts of country still lacking basic clean water and electricity, negative wage growth for graduates, declining standards in education, growing income inequality and, worryingly, increasingly divisive identity politics.