NO. 342 - ANWAR IBRAHIM IN POWER:

Can the fourth-generation leaders, led by a prominent figure from the second generation in the 1980s and 1990s, innovate a way out of path dependency? In other words, can the country break out of the trajectory that it is on, of rampant racialism in domestic politics which has encouraged corruption, incompetence, and divisiveness on the one hand, and discursive dissociation and non-alignment in fo. [...] He may be wiser now, but whether he has the energy and retains the conviction to change the trajectory and the fate of the country remains to be seen. [...] Given the complex relations between parties and coalitions, between politicians and the arms of government, between leaders and the business world, between the embedded interests of the bureaucracy and the need for politicians to win the vote of civil servants, how are reforms to be identified, prioritised, and pushed through? The following sections will examine to a necessarily limited extent the. [...] Rethinking and reprioritising reforms in a new era Over the decades, the entrenchment of Malay/Bumiputera-centrism as the cornerstone of public discourse, policymaking, and self-identity, interlinked with and enhanced by the propagation of Islamist exceptionalism into a powerful and divisive force, threatens the multicultural nature of Malaysian society. [...] For Anwar, fronting the most promising reform movement in Malaysian history, and leading the country at the very end of his long career, real change, it is suggested here, requires the remedying of entrenched ills and embracing the global changes and challenges of the moment.