Beyond the Ballot Box

Lim Yi Wei is the ADUN for Kampung Tunku and DAP Wanita national assistant publicity secretary. Yi Wei, whose parents were both teachers in public schools, is a social democrat at heart and believes in building a fairer and more equitable Malaysia for all. Recently, she penned an article titled "What Next for DAP," where she argued that the party’s social democratic roots have increasingly been ov...

We are all part of a system – a global capitalist neoliberal economy – that is geared towards profit maximisation over creating a fair and dignified world for everybody. Even the environment is seen as a commodity to be extracted and destroyed for profit. Technology is so advanced and we have created tremendous amounts of wealth, yet most people across the world do not earn enough to afford basic...

Where is Europe heading? This is one of the big questions as we shift towards a more fractured and multipolar world order. Europe is in a moment of deep political and ideological reckoning. After all, we’re seeing the rise of right-wing movements, anti-immigration sentiments, a yearning by some quarters to “go back” to a less multicultural imagined past. In this episode, we have a conversation wit...

From memes to heated exchanges in the comment section, feminism is often distorted through the lens of viral and even ragebait content on social media and reduced to caricatures and stereotypes. Today, feminism has even become a sort of ‘foul word’ in some quarters, with some women trying to distance themselves from the label, as well. But beyond the noise, lies a global grassroots movement agains...

Ethnic affirmative action has shaped Malaysian policymaking and political discourse for more than five decades. The transformational New Economic Policy (NEP) and subsequent similar frameworks have anchored national debates on inequality, opportunity, and the country’s broader social contract.  Yet despite how central these policies are to our politics, our understanding of where interethnic...

9% of Malaysian women who have ever been in a relationship experience domestic violence. 9% may not seem like much, but that essentially amounts to about 800,000 Malaysian women. These are the very realities that Eswari Varanarasamma from WAO confronts in her daily work. Eswari Varanarasamma is a social worker at the Women’s Aid Organisation, where she works closely with women and children affecte...

United Nations experts have warned that there is “widespread and systematic” exploitation and deception affecting Bangladeshi workers in Malaysia. In their statement, they highlight excessive and fraudulent recruitment fees, false job offers, passport confiscation, forced labour and forced return. Simply put, this is debt bondage, or to put it even more plainly, modern-day slavery. But what is dri...

Al Awda is a documentary by Singaporean Jason Soo that follows 22 activists from 15 countries as they sail on the Al Awda Flotilla in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in 2018. Originally meant to leave the journey early, Jason ended up remaining on board, capturing the activists’ fears, strategies and decision-making as they approached an inevitable confrontation with the Israeli O...

Malaysia’s latest labour force figures paint a mixed and intriguing picture of the economy in 2025. Unemployment has fallen to a decade-low of 3%, signalling a labour market that appears resilient on the surface. Growth is also being supported by strong investment flows and steady expansion across key industries, or at least that’s the impression we get from the headlines every time the government...

The 2025 Sabah state election is taking place this weekend on the 29th of November. There are close to 600 candidates representing various parties or running independently, contesting for 73 seats. There are multi-cornered fights everywhere. Indeed Sabah is highly democratised and fluid politically. Its electoral history has been shaped by shifting demographics, the struggle over state rights, and...

Kampung Jalan Papan in Klang is a decades-old settlement where families have lived since before independence. Over the years, the land was transferred, developed and contested, eventually leading a private developer to obtain court orders enabling eviction and demolition. Despite repeated promises of resettlement and affordable housing from both state authorities and the developer, residents say t...

Markela Panegyres is an Australian performance artist, academic, activist and a member of the Socialist Alliance Australia. Known for her raw, provocative performances and video installations, she explores themes of trauma, memory, power, and resistance. Beyond the arts, she is a vocal left-wing organiser deeply involved in Palestine solidarity work, actively campaigns for the academic boycott of...

Neil Woods was once a dedicated narcotics officer. In fact, he spent 14 years working undercover, infiltrating drug gangs in Britain’s underworld. But something changed throughout that journey. Now, Woods is one of the leading advocates for drug policy reform, calling for the end of the war on drugs. He wrote a book titled Good Cop, Bad War , chronicling how his attempts to infiltrate and dismantl...

Zohran Mamdani has won the New York City mayoral election, defeating Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa. Not only that, he also received more than 50% of the popular vote. He’s a proud Democratic Socialist, and notably, the first Muslim and South Asian to become mayor of New York City. Billionaires reportedly spent over 22 million dollars trying to stop him, yet he won. Donald Trump and Elon Musk publi...

In the 2024 Oxfam report, it was revealed that the richest 1% in the Global North extracted US$263 billion from the Global South in 2023 — a stark reminder that inequality and neocolonial exploitation remain hardwired into the global economy. Meanwhile, far-right movements are gaining ground across continents, progressive spaces are grappling with internal contradictions, and even causes like Pale...

Around the world, money is increasingly a gatekeeper to political power. Malaysia is no different. If someone wants to step into politics from outside the elite circle, it’s a tremendous challenge. In two new reports by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the numbers speak for themselves. For example, candidates face mandatory deposits of about RM15,000 for parliamentary seats. Internal part...

Recently, in Melaka, a group of 17-year-olds was accused of allegedly raping their schoolmate at a secondary school in Alor Gajah. In Kedah, there was a statutory rape case involving underage students. And very close to home, in Bandar Utama, Selangor, a 14-year-old boy has been charged with murdering his 16-year-old female schoolmate at SMK Bandar Utama (4). These are only incidents that have bee...

The world is undergoing profound changes. China has become a global powerhouse. The US, while still the most powerful country in the world, is experiencing a relative decline in influence. There are constant conversations about moving toward a multipolar world. But what does this all mean for a middle power like Malaysia?  In this episode, we speak to political analyst James Chai. James has w...

Jagat, the highly acclaimed 2015 Malaysian film directed by Sun-J Perumal, is a coming-of-age story that captures the struggles of working-class Malaysian Tamils with sincerity and earnest reflection. Today, nearly a decade later, Jagat continues to resonate, both as a work of art and as a reflection of identity, displacement, and resilience.  The film was re-released earlier this year, and o...

Southeast Asia is one of the most diverse regions in the world, not just ethnically and culturally but also politically. It’s a region where Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians; democracies, monarchies, and communist states coexist side by side.  However, since the formation of ASEAN, there have been questions and narratives about its potential split or how it’s doomed to fail. But jus...

Myanmar’s devastating civil war grinds into its fourth year, following the 2021 military coup that ousted the country’s elected government. What followed was a nationwide civil disobedience movement, along with the rise of armed resistance groups. The revolutionary forces have been battling the junta for control of the country, not just to restore things as they were but to build something new alt...

Last Friday, the Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim unveiled the RM 419.2 billion Budget 2026. This is a slightly smaller budget than last year’s. While it isn’t an austerity budget by any means and does prioritise fiscal discipline, it begs the question: Does Budget 2026 address the needs of regular Malaysians, especially from the perspective of wages, housing, social protections and more? On top of t...

Budi95 is a targeted subsidy scheme by the Malaysian government to give RON95 petrol at a reduced price to eligible Malaysian citizens, while phasing out blanket subsidy models that cover everyone including non-citizens and some businesses. However, this plan appears somewhat contradictory to what has been discussed and announced for months, which is a system where fuel prices would be floated bas...

The Gender Budget Group (GBG), a coalition of civil society organisations and academics, has urged the Malaysian government to make bold, transformative investments in gender equality in the 2026 National Budget, highlighting that progress on women’s political representation, economic participation, social protection, and protection from violence remains slow. Their memorandum outlines seven key a...

While domestic violence is still very much prevalent in society today, I think we at the very least live in a climate where committing violence against your spouse is culturally unacceptable (broadly speaking of course) and completely illegal. But this wasn’t always the case. There was a time, though – not too long ago, in fact – when if a husband were to beat his wife, for example, it would be se...