MANDIRI: A House for Activists and Rebels

Malaysia’s fight against corruption remains one of the country’s most persistent political and institutional challenges. While the latest results from the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index show Malaysia improving slightly to 52 points and ranking 54th globally, the broader picture remains complicated. Progress in rankings does not necessarily mean corruption has been meaningfully reduced, especially as major controversies continue to surface around powerful institutions, corporate interests, and the very bodies tasked with enforcing anti-corruption laws.We speak to Raymon Ram, President, Transparency International Malaysia, about how the government is doing in its fight against corruption.Image Credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

MANDIRI is a youth-driven civil society organisation founded in 2024 that aims to strengthen democratic participation, social justice, and civic engagement among young people. It is established by a group of activists, namely Amir Hadi, Mohamad Alshatry and Dobby Chew – names you probably recognise if you’ve been listening to the show for some time. In this episode, we speak to Dobby Chew about what the organisation is all about, the state of civil society in Malaysia today, and the upcoming MUDA elections in which Dobby is contesting.Image Credit: MANDIRI MalaysiaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Malaysia today finds itself at an important juncture. For starters, the MADANI government is currently led by a reformist coalition and a Prime Minister who has championed good governance and institutional reform for decades. The past few weeks have been especially pivotal, though. On the one hand, you’ve got a recent Bloomberg investigation into alleged “corporate mafia” behaviour within the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), including controversy surrounding Chief Commissioner Azam Baki.  This has reignited public concerns about integrity and continues to impact public trust in the government and institutions. At the same time, the government has tabled major reform initiatives  from the long-debated Attorney General–Public Prosecutor split to a constitutional amendment to introduce a two-term limit for the Prime Minister. So, how do we make sense of the government’s reform agenda so far, particularly when it comes to prosecutorial independence and the structures of the MACC?We speak to Maha Balakrishnan, Parliamentary and Policy Advocacy Specialist. Image Credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two days ago, the U.S. and Israel launched massive joint air operations against Iran, saying they were targeting military infrastructure and seeking regime change. Hundreds of civilians have been killed, including more than a hundred young Iranian girls, whose school was bombed. Several senior Iranian military figures and politicians have also been killed, including the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran has since launched retaliatory attacks on U.S. bases across the Gulf. The confrontation is ongoing and continues to escalate.The death of Ayatollah Khamenei has invited a spectrum of responses from outright condemnation of what many see as illegal aggression, to support from those who argue that removing authoritarian regimes may create space for democracy. In this episode, we step back from the headlines to examine the first principles of geopolitics: who has the right to decide, and on what grounds.Image Credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the longest time, particularly since the late 90s, then-opposition parties from PKR to DAP to PAS campaigned on a platform of anti-corruption and anti-cronyism, against the Barisan Nasional. This only intensified during former, disgraced Prime Minister Najib Razak’s time in power and the 1MDB scandal. This ultimately led to the downfall of the Barisan Nasional government in 2018.The question is, how much do these parties actually practice the transparency and accountability they once demanded of others?Recently, the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (IKMAS) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), in collaboration with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), published a paper on the transparency index of political parties in Malaysia.In this episode, we speak to one of the co-authors of the paper, Dr Haris Zuan, from UKM, about what the findings reveal regarding internal democracy and financial transparency within Malaysia’s major political parties.Image credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We often hear about neighbourhoods being evicted, houses being torn down, and communities organising against the state or private developers, demanding fair compensation, proper consultation, and the right to remain on their land.Development, Displacement and Democracy: The Place of Eviction Protests in Malaysia is a paper that examines how these eviction protests function as an important but often overlooked form of democratic participation in Malaysia’s development process. The paper argues that eviction protests should be recognised as legitimate democratic actors and recommends stronger legal protections, institutionalised public consultation, and formal inclusion of CSOs to ensure more participatory and just development in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this episode, we unpack the paper with its author, Jeremy Lim. Image Credit: socialis.netSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take One Action is an initiative based in Scotland that uses film as a tool to help people make sense of the world. The organisation curates documentaries and features that explore themes like inequality, climate justice, human rights, and collective action, often pairing them with discussions, workshops, and conversations with activists, academics, and filmmakers. In this episode, we speak to Daisy Crooke, Events and Communities Coordinator, Take One Action, about the power of film in helping us make sense of the world and politics. Daisy Crooke is also working together with the Malaysian Freedom Film Network on their Emerging Curators Lab. For more information, visit: freedomfilm.my/emergingcuratorslabImage Credit: Take One ActionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many of us born in the 90s, we’ve only known one world: A world where the US has been the singular hegemon, leading what we call a unipolar world. This has been the case since the tail end of the Cold War and especially so after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But things are changing. There’s plenty of talk about a shift towards a multipolar world. This isn’t just what’s been said by leftists or anti-colonialists from the global south. It was also highlighted by the Canadian Prime Minister and former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, in his speech at Davos on a new world order. He called it a “rupture.” So, how do we make sense of these changes? And what does it mean for Malaysia?In this two-part conversation, I speak to Dr Lim Teck Ghee, who’s an economic historian, author, and public intellectual. His new book “China Rising: USA and West Responses” is a compilation of over 50 column articles in Oriental Daily over the past 4 years, focused on, as the title suggests, the emergence of China as a global political and economic force. In part two of the conversation, we focus on: What are the possibilities of World War III with Taiwan as the flashpoint?Is it time for China to put the 1949 revolution behind it and accept Taiwan as a sovereign nation? The human rights violations in XinjiangShould China put its principle of non-interference aside and actively defend its allies militarilyWhat should ASEAN keep in mind as China continues to riseImage Credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For many of us born in the 90s, we’ve only known one world: A world where the US has been the singular hegemon, leading what we call a unipolar world. This has been the case since the tail end of the Cold War and especially so after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But things are changing. There’s plenty of talk about a shift towards a multipolar world. This isn’t just what’s been said by leftists or anti-colonialists from the global south. It was also highlighted by the Canadian Prime Minister and former governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney in his speech at Davos on a new world order. He called it a “rupture.” So, how do we make sense of these changes? And what does it mean for Malaysia?In this two-part conversation, I speak to Dr Lim Teck Ghee, who’s an economic historian, author and public intellectual. His new book “China Rising: USA and West Responses” is a compilation of over 50 column articles in Oriental Daily over the past 4 years, focused on, as the title suggests, the emergence of China as a global political and economic force. In part one of the conversation, we focus on: The key features of a unipolar US-led world orderWhat shifting towards a multipolar world meansHow China went from a poor country to the second largest economyPopular misconceptions of ChinaWhat does democracy mean in China?Significance of Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney’s speech at DavosImage Credit: ShutterstockSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jeffrey Epstein was a financier and convicted sex offender whose network spanned the worlds of finance, politics, academia, and celebrity. Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice released what is now known as the Epstein Files. There are over 3 million pages, 2,000+ videos, and 180,000+ images, so far, including flight logs, emails, court filings, and internal notes detailing his activities and connections. Two rounds of document releases have so far painted an incredibly repulsive picture of sexual exploitation, trafficking, and elite complicity. Some of the highlights include: US President Donald Trump, who is mentioned in over 38,000 references, with the most serious allegation being a withdrawn 2016 federal lawsuit accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl at Epstein’s Manhattan residence.Silicon Valley billionaires, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and others, appearing hundreds of times. There are also emails and exchanges suggesting an international political network involving countries such as Israel, India, and Russia. All of this is merely scratching the surface of the Epstein files. To try and make sense of it all, we speak to Peter Beattie, Political Economist and Political Psychologist from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Image Credit: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, 1993 via PicrylSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.