Friday, March 14, 2014

About Malaysia

Occasionally, an article allows a glimpse of a nation's dirty secrets, as this Bloomberg View piece does about Malaysia. Malaysia's weakness is its overt pro-Malay governmental bias.

According to the CIA's World Factbook, the ethnic composition of Malaysia is 50.4% Malay, 23.7% Chinese, 11% indigenous, 7.1% Indian, 7.8% other. Because Malaysia allowed heavily Chinese Singapore to secede peacefully in 1965, ethnic Malays are a large enough group to control their nation's politics.

Although a bare majority, the government is of, by, and for Malays, with no apologies. Candor requires a judgment that they've not done a spectacular job of it; in the current missing plane contretemps Malaysian officials have appeared particularly inept.