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Synopsis
In this podcast, New Mandala’s editor Liam Gammon talks to Prof Meredith Weiss about whether Malaysia is witnessing “democratisation through elections”, and Dr Ross Tapsell, Director of the ANU Malaysia Institute, speaks with Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan about how civil society can hold the new government to its promises of reform.
This podcast was produced with the support of the Malaysia Institute and the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.
About the guests
Meredith L. Weiss is Professor of Political Science at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research addresses political mobilisation and contention, the politics of development, forms of collective identity, and electoral politics, primarily in Southeast Asia. She is the author of Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (Cornell SEAP/NUS Press, 2011) and Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (Stanford, 2006).
Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan is a practising lawyer and President of the National Human Rights Society (HAKAM). She is a former Co-Chairperson of the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (BERSIH). From 2007–2009 she was President of the Malaysian Bar and continues to be an active member of the Malaysian Bar. She has received the U.S. Secretary of State Award for International Women of Courage, and the Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by the French Government. After the victory of the Pakatan Harapan coalition in Malaysia’s May 2018 general election, she was appointed to the Committee on Institutional Reforms, an expert body established to develop recommendations for the new government on matters of institutional and legal reform.