A mini forum on the '08 Malaysian General Elections impact on the region

Radio Pulze @ BTC’s “TWO-THIRDS DENIED: MALAYSIA DECIDED”— A mini forum on the Malaysian GE ’08 impact on the region.

It goes undenied, the forum was a success from the get-go.

Admittedly, it was not a Red Dot Forum (that ubiquitous forum Radio Pulze has come to be known for over the past semester), however it filled the vacuum in the face of breaking affairs in the region i.e. the shocking results of the Malaysian general elections(the ruling coalition was dealt a slap in the face by the opposition who denied them their two-thirds majority of Parliamentary seats). And it certainly lived up to being an inaugural Radio Pulze @ BTC initiative, which was aimed at bringing Radio Pulze closer to NUS’ (estranged?) communities of Law and Public Policy over at the Bt Timah Campus.

Despite all odds, the response was so much warmer than we expected, which thrilled us to bits! We had a sizeable audience interestingly made up of 1st year GLBs, a man from Negeri Sembilan who happened to be passing by, exchange students from the main campus and a few law students, amongst others. And of course, not forgetting the interested Malaysian students (:

The forum was moderated by Ms Lydia Rahman, a senior presenter at Radio Pulze who has had vast experience in broadcasting, being the former Red Dot Forum’s Chief Executive Producer and having her own weekly show(Blackcurrant Affairs), amongst others. The panel, more importantly, could not have been more stellar and varied in representing distinct perspectives— they were:

1. Dr Ooi Kee Beng, research Fellow at ISEAS and author of numerous academic works on Malaysian politics
2. A/P Tey Tsun Hang, tutor at the NUS Faculty of Law, practicing lawyer, former District Judge& State Counsel at the AG’s Chambers
3. Prof Johan Saravanamuttu, former Dean of Universiti Sains Malaysia’s School of Social Sciences and visiting research Fellow at ISEAS
4. Ms Shahirah Mahmood, Research Assistant at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and upcoming PhD candidate at University of Wisconsin-Madison
5. Mr Yam Wern-Jhien, a final year NUS Law student of Malaysian origin

The forum blueprint had outlined certain key discussion points— not wanting to be a forum for stale analysis that had been repeated ad nauseum in the mainstream media the past 2 weeks, the moderator went for the jugular: a) How the elections results will affect the daily lives and future of Malaysians both living in Malaysia and abroad; and the impact on the rest of us in the region, b) whether Malaysia has set a precedent and will spread the ‘activist opposition bug’ to the region in the name of robust democracy, bearing in mind upcoming Taiwanese, Indonesian &Singapore elections etc within the next 2yrs, c) the significant role of bloggers and alternative media, and 4) current human rights /constitutional law issues surfacing around the elections period.

However, encouraged by the extremely robust interaction between the panelists and the moderator(who happens to also be a final-year Singaporean law student well-versed in Malaysian politics), and also owing to the free-form nature of the discussion, the time allocation was overshot excessively and we soon had to reluctantly draw the festivities to a close. But not before the panelists fielded interesting questions from the fired-up crowd in the Q&A segment, of course!

The evening then culminated in the off-session chatting and mingling between the attendees and our stellar panelists over Delifrance refreshments, which essentially wrapped up the achievement of our objectives: apart from bringing Radio Pulze closer to the BTC community, we also aimed to show that youth activism need not be mere unproductive candle-light vigils/picnics/protests, or epistolary armchair criticism on alternative media fora alone— it can and must also be engagement of the students and academics/specialists in rigorous debate on issues of significant importance to us in this community of higher learning as well as in the wider universal community we all live in. After all Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed once said, "Some may think that to affirm dialogue— the encounter of women and men in the world in order to transform the world— is naively and subjectively idealistic. There is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans."

And that, of course, has left us very inspired to plan more of such Radio Pulze @ BTC forums in the near future!