Since obtaining independence in 1957, Malaysia has had two historic general elections, the first in 2018 and the second in 2022. The 2018 election brought the reformist Pakatan Harapan government into power. Due to both internal and external machinations, the Pakatan Harapan administration collapsed 22 months later. Subsequently, more than two years of socio-political instability ensued, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic hardships, and increasing ethnic polarization and identity politics. After the 2022 election, there was renewed hope. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Pakatan Harapan again leads a new coalition government (dubbed the “unity” government). Sharifah Munirah Alatas discusses these developments in a series of short essays. She highlights the peoples’ hopes for crucial reforms and their lingering despair for what seems unattainable. Alatas focuses on the rise in corruption, identity politics, and what she considers the dismal failure of the nation’s public universities. She questions the future of the nation but hopes for a revolutionary change in leadership attitudes.

S. Munirah Alatas, Ph.D. is a former Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Indonesian International Islamic University (UIII, Jakarta). In March 2023, she retired from a career in Strategic Studies and International Relations at the National University of Malaysia (UKM). Munirah’s doctorate and MA degrees are from Columbia University, and her BA is from the University of Oregon. Her scholarly interests and writings focus on decolonial thought, geopolitics, foreign policy, non-Western International Relations theory, and autonomous social science traditions.

Munirah also speaks regularly in public fora and writes in her media columns, on Malaysian politics, civil society, good governance, higher education reform and the future direction of universities.