MALAYSIA: The time has come...

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I don’t ever remember writing about MALAYSIA before but the country is in the news and I have a special reason for following events there.

I travelled to Malaysia years ago on a business trip. It was a very, very long journey to get there and when I arrived at 4AM and stepped outside, I knew I was in trouble. The temperature in Kuala Lumpur at 4AM was in the 90s so what should I expect when the sun came out.

Malaysia is officially Muslim and it was long pants and long sleeved shirts and a temperature over 100°F; I thought I was going to die of heat stroke. We ate in open air restaurants with our fingers with the meals served on palm leaves…interesting?

Anyway, the country is a constitutional monarchy and a democracy with elections but there were problems. The indigenous population is MALAY with large populations of Chinese and Hindu Indians mainly from the south of India.

All laws are biased towards the Malays. In fact only Malay can head a company so Chinese and Indian companies have to hire a Malay CEO and pay him even though he is just a figure head and does not actually run anything…strange?

I knew that this form of autocratic government would be challenged in future years and it seems the time has arrived. The New York Times among other media, are reporting that Malaysians are asking for election reforms and are protesting in public to have their voices heard.

Nearly 2,000 protesters were arrested and tear gas and water cannon were used to disperse the protesters but I think that just like in the Middle East, people are fed up with autocratic governments and want the winds of freedom to start blowing in their direction and I applaud their efforts.

The news accounts did not specify the ethnic make-up of the protestors and just called them Malaysians but I know that Malays are treated better by the government than other ethnicities so I don’t think they were the ones trying to improve the election process…I will do more digging.

I have many great stories from my visit and one is that the Malay women are beautiful and even though some of them wear the Islamic burquas, their faces remain uncovered and are made-up. I found that fascinating that these women have only the face to work with to show off their beauty…and they do a great job of it.

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