Malasia (Continuación)

MundoAsia

Malaysia is in crisis. The economy is faltering and the government is floundering, struggling to explain away unprecedented financial scandals. Critics ascribe these problems to a lack of transparency and good governance, but these are merely symptoms. The root cause of Malaysia’s current troubles is ketuanan Melayu: the ideology of Malay supremacy espoused by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the party that has dominated the country’s politics for more than six decades.

Malaysia has a vast system of institutionalized preferences for Malays, the majority of the population, which grants them economic and other privileges over ethnic Chinese, Indians and other minorities.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Over the last decade, economic growth — combined with a push to become a leader in education and information technology in Southeast Asia — has made Malaysia a magnet for students and immigrants from Africa. It should be a success story of progress and cultural exchange, but recently tensions have escalated.

In May, a 30-year-old Nigerian student was sentenced to death in Kuala Lumpur for trafficking 1.7 pounds of methamphetamine. It was the second capital sentence handed to a Nigerian citizen in Malaysia in two months, following the sentencing of another student, also for meth trafficking.

Sandwiched between these headline cases was a more minor crime story — but still a revealing one.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

It appears that the Malaysian government has not learned from its mistakes.

For Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to announce that the debris found on Reunion Island conclusively belongs to MH370, when French authorities directly involved with the inspection of the debris in question -- a flaperon-- are calling the discovery a good supposition, is reckless. This is not about semantics. This is about responsibility.

Allow me to step out of the airline pilot box for a moment. Discussing the investigative analysis of the flaperon, a flight control surface, and how this inspection relates to the impact of the 777 with the water has been well discussed both on air and on this website.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Parit is a small town of roughly 2,000 people in the state of Perak, deep in the rural heartland of Malaysia, with no distinguishing feature other than its attractive location on the banks of a muddy river, which served as the backdrop to a few scenes in the 1999 movie “Anna and the King.” Once a convenient and bustling stopping-off point on the winding road from Ipoh, the state capital, to Taiping in the north, Parit suffered from the construction of the North-South Expressway in the 1990s, which diverted passing trade away from the town.

Today the shops that line its two main streets are either closed for good or open only erratically, the paint on their stuccoed facades faded and patchy with moss — a poignant reminder of the decline of rural life in Malaysia over the past three decades.…  Seguir leyendo »

Criminalizing Malaysia’s Opposition

MundoAsia

Last Thursday, my mother was elected the new member of Malaysia’s Parliament from Permatang Pauh, a seat that was wrested away from the opposition through the politically motivated conviction of my father, Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister and the country’s opposition leader. In February, the highest court in Malaysia sent him to prison for five years on trumped up charges of sodomy. He is serving his third prison sentence since 1999.

In March, I delivered a speech in Parliament focused on good governance and judicial reform on behalf of my father. The reading was deemed seditious by the government, and I was arrested and locked up overnight.…  Seguir leyendo »

Singapore’s Path to Ending an Old Rivalry

MundoAsia,

Just after 6 o’clock on a Monday morning, and traffic on the Johor-Singapore Causeway is already busy. In less than an hour, still shrouded in semi-darkness, the Singapore-bound traffic leading to the 0.7-mile bridge will have slowed to a crawling pace; in bad weather or on the eve of public holidays, rush hour queues sometimes last up to two hours. A striking number of family sedans with Singaporean license plates stream steadily toward the expressway that leads to the heart of the island republic. Inside the cars, bleary-eyed schoolchildren contemplate the long day ahead.

As the population of Singapore increases and the cost of living, especially of housing, remains high, more Singaporeans are choosing to live across the narrow strait in Malaysia and commute in.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, , ,

Tener una buena reputación de integridad y decencia es de importancia tanto en las relaciones internacionales como en la vida personal y profesional. Los Estados que son considerados como íntegros y decentes de manera consistente se desempeñan mejor de lo esperado – los Estados escandinavos son prueba patente de ello. Por el contrario, los que nunca ganan dicha reputación – o la dilapidan – pueden poner en serio peligro sus propios intereses, arriesgando el comercio internacional, el turismo, la inversión extranjera, el apoyo político en foros y negociaciones internacionales, y la seguridad de sus propios ciudadanos en el extranjero.

Tres de los Estados más importantes del sudeste de Asia – Malasia, Tailandia, y más recientemente Indonesia – se han metido en problemas, por su propia cuenta, durante los últimos meses.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Does democracy in Malaysia really depend on Anwar Ibrahim?

If it does, Malaysia’s 30 million people are in trouble. Anwar is back in jail: at least five years’ imprisonment, and another five years’ ban from political activity after that. He says he doesn’t care: “Whether it’s five years or ten it doesn’t matter to me anymore. They can give me twenty years. I don’t give a damn.”

But of course he cares. By the time he’s free to resume his role as opposition leader, he’ll be at least 77. The People’s Alliance, the three-party opposition coalition that he created, can’t afford to wait 10 years for him to be free.…  Seguir leyendo »

Malaysia’s New Migrants

MundoAsia,

Shyam is a skinny 32-year-old who looks barely out of his teens, the father of a young boy whom he has not seen for nearly two years. I first met him four years ago when he was working as a porter for a trekking company in the hills of western Nepal, close to where he was born and grew up.

Back then, his work involved hauling 60-pound baskets of provisions — half his own body weight, we calculated — up and down the steep slopes of the tourist trails for 10 hours a day, all for a daily wage of $7.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaEspañaEconomíaEspañaPolítica Exterior

Tema[1]: Este estudio repasa los aspectos más importantes que deberían ayudar a las empresas a tomar la decisión de si el mercado de Malasia es viable o no para su actividad comercial y/o productiva.

Resumen: Malasia en particular y la Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) en general, a pesar de ser una de las áreas económicamente más activas y con mayor crecimiento del mundo, son unos grandes desconocidos para la mayoría de las empresas españolas. Malasia es un mercado de tamaño medio, con alta capacidad adquisitiva, abierto, dinámico y en el que, como todos, debemos dedicar un tiempo y esfuerzo antes de intentar introducirnos.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

Almost as soon as the news broke about the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine on Thursday, in which all 298 passengers and crew members were killed, people began to ask: What was a commercial aircraft doing over a conflict zone in the first place? Was this disaster somehow the airline’s fault?

The answer is no — but to understand why, you have to look at the complex realities of modern commercial aviation.

Malaysia Airlines, already world famous because of the still-missing flight MH370, appears to have been following all normal safety rules. And the rules governing airline flights over danger zones, including Ukraine, reflect the balance between the risks inherent in any flight and the efficiency on which the world airline system depends.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

For 15 years, the people of Malaysia have been immersed in our own Arab Spring. After enduring a corrupt and authoritarian regime for more than five decades, an era has emerged in which we are standing up for our rights.

For the first time in our history, the voices of reform and democracy represent the majority. In last year’s general election, the popular vote in favor of the opposition would have swept from power the authoritarian regime of Najib Razak and the party that has ruled Malaysia since its independence in 1957. In its place would have been the Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance), poised to push the nation on the path to greater freedom and democracy.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

At a coffee shop in Bangsar, an affluent Kuala Lumpur suburb, the lunchtime crowd gossips and checks the news on their smartphones. Making the rounds is a YouTube video in which a bomoh — a local shaman — and two acolytes, sitting on a “magic carpet” in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, perform a ritual to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, missing since March 8.

At any other time the video, a perfect example of Malaysian self-mockery, would be a good-natured affirmation of our eccentric shortcomings. But these aren’t ordinary times. The search for Flight 370 has spotlighted the tensions beneath one of Asia’s success stories, and the video is an uncomfortable reminder of Malaysia’s troubled reality.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

There is still much that is mysterious about the fate of Malaysia Air Flight 370, but there is emerging consensus that the passenger jet bound for Beijing changed course, flying west over the Indian Ocean and flew for at least four hours. This tends to suggest that there was a human intervention, rather than a mechanical failure.

Typically such a human intervention would be a hijacking for political purposes, as was the case with the 9/11 flights or any number of other hijackings.

But no credible terrorist group has asserted responsibility for this operation and whoever diverted Malaysia Air Flight 370 issued no demands, which would be typical in the case of most hijackings.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

Sometimes, the crash site is never found.

In 1972 a Pan Alaska Airways flight with one pilot and three passengers took off from Anchorage bound for Juneau, planning to fly the route under visual flight rules despite bad weather conditions. After one last contact with air traffic controllers, the Cessna was on its way. The plane never reached Juneau. The flight had two congressmen on board -- Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Nicholas Begich of Alaska.

The search for the missing aircraft was intense, encompassing 325,000 square miles of land and sea, with 3,600 flight hours used to look for the wreckage.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

The lack of definitive information about the fate of Malaysia Flight 370 has baffled and riveted expert and average person alike. Even the promise of Chinese satellite images capturing the location of crash debris turned out to be false, as Malaysian authorities said a search of the area found nothing.

Amid the muddle of speculation, possibilities and blind alleys, are there logical explanations in this mysterious disappearance? The short answer is yes. But what, of what we know so far, makes sense exactly?

First, the focus on the airplane's transponders, the device that transmits a discreet signal to Air Traffic Control (ATC) radars, might be misguided.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, ,

Muchas personas se preguntan por qué existen tan pocas pistas sobre el destino del vuelo 370 de Malaysia Airlines, empezando porque no existió una llamada de socorro.

Sin embargo, que no exista una llamada no es particularmente desconcertante. Una de las prioridades de un aviador es mantener el control del avión por encima de todo. Una emergencia puede consumir fácilmente el 100% de los esfuerzos de una tripulación. Para un piloto de aerolíneas, la ausencia de llamadas por radio al personal en tierra que no podrían hacer mucho para ayudar a la situación inmediata no es ninguna sorpresa.

Esta investigación puede enfrentar muchos paralelos al Air France 447, un Airbus A330 que se estrelló en un área más allá de la cobertura de radar al norte del océano de Brasil en junio de 2009.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Judging by their giddy rally today, markets in Malaysia are beyond relieved that the country’s general elections are over. A win for the incumbent Barisan Nasional coalition, whose main party has led Malaysia since independence, appeared to promise continuity and stability. Prime Minister Najib Razak adopted a humble tone after the bitterly fought campaign, calling for “national reconciliation.”

Elections in Asia, however, often prove less than decisive when the margin of victory is narrow and the stakes are high. Rather than settling matters, yesterday’s vote could well open up Malaysia to the kind of gridlock and endless campaigning that has plagued capitals from Bangkok to Washington.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Malaysians are going to the polls Sunday for the most important election in our history. The opposition stands a real chance of winning, for the first time since independence from Britain in 1957. Recent polls show the People’s Alliance, the opposition coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, running neck and neck with the governing National Front, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak.

The National Front, the direct successor to the Alliance Party of the 1950s, has been one of the world’s longest-governing parties, outside of authoritarian regimes like China, North Korea and Cuba. For half a century, until 2008, it had a two-thirds parliamentary majority, which allowed it to amend Malaysia’s Constitution at will.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Imagine a world trading solely in gold and silver coins. Imagine the size of your wallet.

Yet this is the ideal world envisaged by some of Malaysia's activists championing the Islamic gold dinar and silver dirham as a new form of legal tender to replace paper money – a utopia that could see the light of day as early as the middle of next month.

This is when one such group, Muamalah Council, plans to implement the dinar system in Malaysia's northern state of Kelantan. If information on its website is to be believed, the council has the blessing of the state's Islamist government, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (Pas), to kickstart the dinar in three moves.…  Seguir leyendo »