Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

By Simon Roughneen  Ahead of what reform campaigners believe will be Malaysia's "dirtiest ever elections", the long-ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) has engineered something of a clean-up. In recent months, it has reformed some old and oft-derided laws, such as allowing indefinite detention without trial and forcing local newspapers to apply each year for a publication permit, a stipulation that encouraged self-censorship.  UMNO and its allies have governed Malaysia consecutively since achieving independence from colonial rule, a longevity not usually associated with electoral democracies. UMNO and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition survived the last election in 2008, though it ceded its two-thirds parliamentary majority for the first time and lost five out of 13 federal states to the opposition, a coalition of three parties led by controversial former UMNO firebrand Anwar  Ibrahim that includes the Islamic party PAS and the Chinese-dominated Democratic...

By Viktor Wong We had managed to get some Sabahan's who are currently working in peninsular for an interview on the current situation on their homeland on condition that we should not expose their identities for fear of persecution by the state authorities and the local ruling elites. We agreed that safeguarding their identities will be our utmost priority. When we started interviewing them on the current socio-economic and political situation in Sabah, we were gravely shock to hear the worst of all over what we had actually expected. Composition of ethnics in Sabah As expected, if a general question were to put forward on who is the largest and majority stakeholder in Sabah's ethnicity, everyone of us would certainly to give one straight answer, that is the combination Kadazan Dusun and Muruts. Okay, let us look at the current ethnic composition which we got from various source. The Kadazan Dusun and Muruts current consist of about 21.1%, while the Bajaus are 13.4%, Malays con...