Category: Books, essays and others

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Books, essays and others Economics Politics & government

[2954] The frustrating read that is Notes to the Prime Minister

The ringgit has been on a depreciating trend versus the US dollar since early April 2022. While it is natural for Malaysians to focus on the ringgit, the depreciation is best explained by the strengthening of the US dollar against a slew of other currencies. Global events are triggering capital to head to the US, leaving other economies having to deal with the repercussions of such capital flight. But this fact does not stop Malaysians from calling domestic authorities to do something about the depreciation. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed recommends Malaysia pegs the ringgit as the country once did.

This is where Wong Sulong’s Notes to the Prime Minister: The Untold Story of How Malaysia Beat the Currency Speculators might be useful in providing greater details how pegging and capital control of the 1990s came about.

Unfortunately, the book does not do the job very well by digressing too much.

The book is firstly a reproduction of notes Nor Mohamed Yakcop wrote for the Mahathir at the heights of the crisis. Nor Mohamed is the architect behind the pegging and possibly the brain behind the rebuilding of Malaysia post-Asia Financial Crisis.

Secondly, it is an unexpected festschrift-like tangent in honor of the man, written by men and women (themselves had, and have, big roles in corporate Malaysia post-1998) Nor Mohamed recruited to head various government bodies and companies.

While the notes are useful and enlightening, the book is deficient in a way the notes are ill-supported by context-making commentaries. Because of the structure, the book makes a disorienting read, which leaves me dissatisfied.

When I bought the book some time back, I had expected it would discuss how Malaysia came to the decisions it made, and how the debates among those in power went. Furthermore, given the book was published more than 10 years after the crisis, possibly a critical review of the pegging and capital control.

There is no critical review. When I write critical, I do not mean criticizing the actions. Rather, I expect an examination why the policy worked for Malaysia. What we have instead is assertion that it worked and everybody else in the world was wrong.

Debates had around the various policies advocated by Nor Mohamed through notes are totally absent. A reader would need prior and outside knowledge of the economic and political environment of the 1990s to truly comprehend the reasons and tensions behind the notes. For instance, Nor Mohamed in his letters to Mahathir here and there criticized decisions taken by the Finance Ministry and the central bank, both of which were responsible to the then Finance Minister, Anwar Ibrahim. But Wong Sulong left the tensions largely out. I did not expect a full political analysis of tensions between Mahathir and Anwar, but I think it would be reasonable to expect an exploration of policy difference between the two men in response to the Asian Financial Crisis.

This makes me feel reading the book a little like reading Malaysian newspapers in the 1990s and the 2000s. Journalists during those decades (sometimes, even now) liked to write about the government’s reply to an issue, but not the issue itself. Imagine the government saying “everybody is alright” in response to a major vehicular accident, but that accident is not mentioned at all. The public of that era would have to guess what the government was referring to. Reading Notes to the Prime Minister is a little bit like that: frustrating. Annoying even.

Nor Mohamed proposed multiple policies in his notes, but readers are left to guess whether the policies were adopted. This is yet another example how the Wong leaves the notes uncontextualized.

My frustration grows further when in the chapters following the ‘notes,’ the book goes off tangent to celebrate Nor Mohamad. The man deserves to be celebrated, but the book overly does it by having various then-contemporary corporate captains (several of them are still active) recounting how they met the man and describing the man’s best traits in a festschrift style.

Nevertheless, some of the stories told help readers understand some aspects of government policy in the 2000s. I also become more appreciative how many GLC men and women were Nor Mohamed Yakcop’s men and women. When Najib was at war with Mahathir, and reopened the forex scandal of the 1980s and inevitably found Nor Mohamed as the number one scapegoat, I wonder how these men and women felt. But again, these insights come only frustratingly indirectly.

Finally, the notes themselves are fascinating. I learned one or two things that I took for granted before. I think more importantly, I am just impressed how detail-oriented Nor Mohamed Yakcop was, how knowledgeable he was, and how he was able to explain complex financial transactions in simple terms to the Prime Minister. Very clear-minded.

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Books, essays and others Pop culture Sci-fi

[2945] Watching Foundation

Amid the Dune hype, it is easy to miss the other classic sci-fi hitting the screen. A different screen in a different format, but screen nonetheless. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation has been adapted for Apple TV+ streaming service with 8 of 10 episodes aired. I myself found out about it after browsing Facebook.

I read Foundation a long time ago as a teenager, and the idea of psychohistory was so attractive that I was bought into its universe so deeply. I know Star Wars before Foundation, but I understand Trantor, the capital planet of the Empire in Foundation, first before Coruscant, the capital of the Empire in Star Wars.

I was not the only one loving Foundation obviously. I could not. I remember reading in an interview where Paul Krugman said he went into economics because of Foundation; the predictive power of psychohistory does have a hint of economics in it. Lots of probabilities, and possibly econometrics.

But that was a long time ago, and I admit, I do not remember all the details. My reading list meanwhile has moved on from science fiction to stuff grounded more on reality. There is only one unread sci-fi on my shelf waiting to be opened: Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem (okay, there is also Forward the Foundation, but I was told, it is an unjust prequel to the original trilogy).

So, I thought I must be getting old and utterly forgetful when I watched the first episode of Apple’s Foundation. While Hari Seldon was there, the details did not feel right. The Genetic Dynasty? Could I have missed something that big? The pace of the series, as I kept on watching the rest of the series, felt too fast to what I remembered it. In the novels, hundreds of years would pass. In the series, less than a human lifetime.

As it turns out, my memory is fully intact. A little internet refresher reminds me of the Foundation I know. Further research reveals that the series diverges away from the novel, adding new elements and throwing away some.

I know people who are angry at this. The deviation from the novel feels blasphemous. Foundation feels like a holy book, and the series defiles it.

At first, I felt the same way, but really, at risk of being cancelled, I enjoy the series. I really do (and I really like Jared Harris, the man playing Hari Seldon, from his Sherlock Holmes days).

And clearly this is not the first time an original work has been reimagined. Star Wars, under Disney, did that when they threw out of the window all of original storylines told by the Thrawn Trilogy and more. Marvel, under Disney too, definitely changed the background to some of its major characters. Star Trek rebooted its whole universe, rather unsuccessfully if I might add.

So, as blasphemous as it might be, the act of fiddling the original story, I have been desensitized to the idea. A retelling could be as fulfilling as the reading the original.

After all, we are living in an age where actual history is being reassessed and retold in different lights. Old understandings are being overturned. Revisionism aplenty.

Not be quite a parallel, but it seems like a zeitgeist of our time.

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Books, essays and others Fiction

[2943] From Afghanistan to Algeria

These days, I generally prefer reading non-fiction to expand my knowledge. So far, it has been mostly history, mixed with a little bit of politics and economics. And it has been Malaysiana-heavy. So, I thought I needed a break from this and picked up some fictions for a change.

I recently finished reading two of them. One was The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter, which is set in Algeria and France. The other is Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, set in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States. Both have the protagonists having lost their country to armed conflicts, and ended up as refugees in foreign but adopted lands.

I enjoyed them. And I thought I learned a little bit about Algeria and Afghanistan.

After completing almost every chapter, I found myself consulting Google Map and Wikipedia trying to comprehend the context sets by the both authors in their respective work. In The Art of Losing, I was attracted to paragraphs of Hamid the little boy remembering Algeria as Algiers, the white city on the coast of the Mediterranean despite only passing by the capital and having not living there, ever. He and his family were fleeing the country, and hectically catching a boat in order to cross the sea to get to France. That was the last time he saw Algeria.

Zeniter’s description of Algiers made me curious. A white city by the Mediterranean. That made me read more about it and searched for pictures of the city from the sea. On Google Map with its 3D feature, Algiers looks as described: a city of layers of white 3-4-5 storey buildings lining up the Algerian coast. And I did not realize the northern part of Algeria was quite green. When I thought of northern Africa, I could only think of mountains and deserts. I had extrapolated wrongly.

There is a scene in The Kite Runner where Hassan and his father were escaping Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. They were smuggled out of the country in a truck through the famed Khyber Pass. They needed to reach Peshawar in Pakistan that lies on the eastern end of the pass. I watched a couple of Youtube videos to understand the geography of the pass and comprehend the difficulty of the journey.

I have never been to either country, although I think I have flown above Afghanistan before en route to Europe several times. From what I could make from high up in the sky, the Afghan terrain is absolutely rugged.

But between Algeria and Afghanistan, I know the latter more. I was in the United States when the September 11 Attacks occurred, and Afghanistan was a constant feature in American politics for much of my time in Michigan. The Kite Runner makes reference to the US invasion and occupation of the country. More than that, the characters in the Kite Runners celebrated the fall of the Taliban:

That December, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras gathered in Bonn and, under the watchful eye of the UN, began the process that might someday end over twenty years of unhappiness in their watan. [Khaled Hosseini. The Kite Runner. Page 316. 2004]

People have been telling me The Kite Runner is an emotional book. Some cried. I did not, but I felt some sadness upon reading the sentence above, knowing the Taliban has returned, twenty years later. I personally feel the US leaving Afghanistan is a mistake. But never mind.

Algeria is more of a mystery to me. I know where it is located: sandwiched between Tunisia and Morocco. know the capital, and I know it is a Muslim country. I recognize its national flag. I may know a little bit about general classical history involving the Romans. But little else. Ask me about modern Algerian history and I will draw a blank. I have an Algerian French friend that I have not met for a long time, but I was not about to bombard her with questions. So, I read additional material online about modern Algeria, about the FLN that fought for Algerian independence and other relevant topics.

I have a copy of Tournament of Shadows by Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac sitting on my book shelf. The book would tell me about Afghanistan much more than The Kite Runner could. But the non-fiction is 700-page long, and has been left unread and untouched for more than 5 years. Moreover, I do have a long list of other books I want to read. So, until the day I start reading that thick book, The Kite Runner (and The Art of Losing) will do.

Are the two poor substitutes to non-fiction as far as learning goes? Maybe, but I enjoyed them thoroughly.

Categories
Books, essays and others Personal

[2942] How’s your book?

The most common question I get these days is, “how’s your book?”

I think it is done. It is at the really, really tail end as far as writing is concerned. I have been re-reading it several times to keep myself happy with the arguments I made. Yes, there are several more feedback to come, and forever reading papers and books to convince myself of the stuff I wrote. But really, I don’t think I will make big changes to the document anymore.

Still, I keep editing it. I have lost track how many rounds of edit from front to back I have done. I keep telling myself, I am editing the manuscript closely to make it perfect. For this latest round, I am editing the penultimate chapter.

But maybe, I am forever editing it because I do not want it to end. After 5 or 6 years working on it, it has become a routine I am comfortable with. I do not want to break the routine.

Such a perverse incentive.

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Books, essays and others

[2926] My readings in 2020

We are almost done with 2020!

This truly horrible year is coming to an end. The lockdown has provided me with an excessive amount of leisure time. I am using the extra time to try to finish off my book, and to catch up with my readings. In 2019 when I was truly busy, I read only 5-7 books throughout the year. This year, I have more than doubled the count.

So, here is a review of some of the stuff I have read in the past 12 months. I am listing 12 here and they are:

  • The Republic by Plato
  • Dubliners by James Joyce
  • The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf
  • The Fall of Constantinople by Steven Runciman
  • The Constitution of Malaysia by Andrew Harding
  • The Good State by A. C. Grayling
  • Contesting Malayness, edited by Timothy Barnard
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright
  • Palace, Political Party and Power by Kobkua Suwanathat-Pian
  • Capitalism Alone by Branko Milanovic
  • Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor

The Republic by Plato, translated by Richard Sterling and William Scott (1996)

I started the year by re-reading The Republic. Well, not quite. It has been an on-and-off reading. I first flipped the pages back in May 2019 but since it was such a heavy reading—the monologues are worse than Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged—I needed a lot of time to read and then digest it. This is a recurring theme: I really, really first read the few first chapters of The Republic back when I was an undergraduate more than 10 years ago.

But what is it about?

The Republic seeks to describe the idea of justice, and the way to which we could create a just (city) state. The expositions are done through a series of long dialogues between Plato’s teacher (Socrates) and a bunch of men in Piraeus in Athens during the times of ancient Greece.

I do not pretend to understand most of the ideas discussed fully. This is the kind of book you have to read multiple times to really understand what is happening. I read parts of the books in short bursts and then watched some lectures on YouTube to help with my comprehension.

In the course of explaining justice, Socrates appears to advocate a dictatorship. He believes in a benevolent kind of dictatorship ruled by philosopher kings striving towards the creation of a just state. Measures he proposed are drastic. For instance, believing Greek religions are unhelpful in teaching men and women virtues, he advocates for a complete rewriting of history and beliefs. Truth does not matter according to Socrates. What matters is the utility of history and beliefs in creating a just society. The changes are so drastic that only a dictatoc could make it.

Reading The Republic shows how certain ideas are very old. For instance, Socrates is big on specialization and division of labor, and he believes each man should focus on one thing and one thing only. A blacksmith should just be a blacksmith and nothing else. A soldier should just be a soldier and nothing else. A ruler just a ruler. While reading that part, I wondered how it might have inspired Adam Smith.

I do not intend to write a full review and I have not finished the book yet. So, let us move on to the next book.

Dubliners by James Joyce (1914)

This is a collection of short stories set in Dublin in the early 20th century. I did not finish it and do not intend to do so because I am not a fan of short stories. I picked the book up on the assumption it was not, and perhaps to prepare myself for Ulysses. I think such preparation is still so far off.

Nevertheless, I read half of the book.

While not a fan of short stories, there are plenty of good ones inside. My favorite is about a young couple living an unhappy life in the city. The young man wants to leave Ireland for America, and tries to convince his lover to come along. She wants to migrate to America, except she feels divided about leaving her family behind, despite her family not treating her well. On the day they are supposed to leave, with both of them about to board a ship for New York, she decides against sailing across the Atlantic. It is an abrupt goodbye.

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf (2019)

This is a fiction set in Kuala Lumpur during the May 13 1969 race riots. The main character, a young teenager suffering from some kind schizophrenia (I think), gets separate from her mother during the riots and she set on a journey crisscrossing the city to reunite with her, on the assumption the mother is still alive.

This book is supposed to be a young adult read but the details can be a bit gore. Not Game of Thrones gore. But still. Example: the scene I remember best is the cinema on Petaling Street. A gang of rioters are barging into the hall with machetes and deciding who should live. People of the wrong skin colors are killed on the spot.

The most exciting thing about the book are the Kuala Lumpur locations cited. There is just something about being able to say “hey, I know that place” while reading the book.

The Fall of Constantinople by Steven Runciman (1965)

This is easily my favorite book for this year. It is super-engaging despite being a scholarly work. This book is truly a treasure. I found the first edition while visiting several bookstores in Istanbul last year.

The Fall of Constantinople recounts the events leading up the the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantium capital in 1453.

Runciman shows that by the 14th century before its final defeat, Byzantium was already a weakened power. Its hold to power did not extend far beyond the city walls of Constantinople.

Conflicts between Byzantium and the Ottomans were not strictly a Christian-Muslim affair. And Byzantium’s political rivals were not just the Muslims. Divisions within the Christian world meant Western Christendom based in Rome did not care enough for Constantinople. Despite pleas from Byzantium for help against a ‘common’ foe, reinforcement from Italy did not arrive until it was too late.

And it feels like Runciman blames Rome and the Italians for the fall, more than the Ottomans.

One or two chapters describe the actual battle and the most astounding detail is a maneuver carried out by the Ottomans. Constantinople was surrounded by tall thick stonewalls on all sides, with large bodies of water on three sides. The only reasonable access was through Byzantium docks on the inside of the Golden Horn, a waterway that meets the Bosporus. But entry was blocked by a strong boom preventing any ship from passing and Ottoman’s ships were not the best in the Mediterranean, especially when compared to Byzantine ships and its allies. To overcome the barrier, the Ottomans under Mehmet II transported their fleet across a peninsula for several miles and then caught the defenders on their flank. That was the beginning of the fall of Constantinople.

The Constitution of Malaysia by Andrew Harding (2012)

This book traces the development of the Constitution and changes that happened over the years. Harding believes Malaysia have had 3 social contracts: first came out of the 1946-1963 periods that began with opposition to the Malayan Union. The second was various amendments made in the aftermath of the May 13 1969 riots. And the third was in the 1990s under Wawasan 2020. These three events influenced the development of the constitution and its interpretation.

Harding finds some faults with the Constitution: the Constitution does not do enough to safeguard basic liberties, and put too much trust on parliamentary democracy. This means there are not enough check-and-balance in Malaysia and as a result, the executive has too much power. Additionally, the Constitution relies too much on exceptions that the exceptions become the rules. Harding proves this by showing the effects from the May 13 riots could still be felt today. For one, local election still has not been reinstated.

He ends the book with a hint of optimism by stating that Malaysia is gradually correcting its past mistakes (particularly errors of the 1980s) since 2008. But I wonder if he feels the same in 2020…

The Good State by A. C. Grayling (2020)

Grayling argues the Westminster model is flawed. It fails at separating powers and relies too much on party politics, so much so that national interest comes second after party interest. Additionally, the Westminster system does a bad job at preventing bad people from getting power. And the whole thing is made worse with the use of first-past-the-post. To address all the problems and more with Westminster democracy, Grayling proposes to make it more representative by implementing proportional representation

Contesting Malayness, edited by Timothy Barnard (2004)

This is a collection of papers on Malay identity presented at a symposium in Leiden, the Netherlands. Each chapter is a different paper and all papers argue that the idea of Malayness is quite complex and not as simple as presented by the Malaysian constitution with its three-test. Ultimately, the Malay identity is more fluid than many would like to admit.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1963)

This is a relative short novel set in a gulag somewhere deep in the Soviet Union. He was innocent but found himself imprisoned nonetheless. As the title suggests, the whole novel happens within a day where the author describes the working conditions within the gulag.

This is my second Sozhenitsyn’s read. The first was For the Good of the Cause, which I like better. One Day, I feel, spends too much time over-describing the scenes that it became a bit of a chore to read.

Billion Dollar Whale by Bradley Hope and Tom Wright (2018)

This book traces the evolution of the fugitive Jho Taek Low from young up to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad corruption scandal. And oh, you’ll Jho Low after reading this book.

Jho Low is painted as an international mystery man with links to various governments all around the world. He even attempted to infiltrate the White House. Jho Low is a smart criminal, working with corrupt collaborators in the Malaysian and Emirati governments (among others).

Despite 1MDB being a convoluted case (I did some work on 1MDB and even then, I had troubles keeping up which was which), Hope and Wright write the book in a very accessible way, and definitely entertaining.

My copy was signed by Tom Wright, thanks to Tony Pua… which is one of the characters inside the book.

Palace, Political Party and Power by Kobkua Suwanathat-Pian (2011)

This traces the evolution of the royal institution during the colonial times, Japanese occupation, post-independence and finally during the Mahathir era.

Most of the Rulers were mere puppets during colonial period, particularly those in the Federated Malay States. Although they lost their political power, the British were careful in raising the Rulers’ prestige to the point that the Malay masses were unaware their rajas had become mere figureheads. The real rulers were the British Resident. So powerful were they that in more than once, the colonial authority had a say in the succession process, which was supposed to be under the sole purview of the Rulers.

The Malays finally found out the truth about the Rulers when the Japanese removed the curtains that the British put up. It was during this time that the Malays really began to develop politically. By the end of the war, the Rulers’ authority had been exhausted that they could not provide the leadership needed. UMNO under Onn Jaafar successfully wrestled Malay leadership from the Rulers and the author provided examples of explicit clashes between Onn Jaafar and the Rulers that, by today’s standard, is quite shocking.

The Rulers’ political fortune was on a persistent downhill until Mahathir resigned for the first time in the early 2000s. Led by the Perak royal house, the monarchy reformed itself to become respectable again and began to assert influence beyond its constitutional roles.

Capitalism Alone by Branko Milanovic (2019)

Capitalism Alone argues capitalism is the only system in the world at the moment but that does not mean it is monolithic. From what I gather, there are two main capitalisms at play at the moment: political capitalism and liberal capitalism. There are other kinds of capitalism but those either do not exist yet, or have become obsolete.

Political capitalism is the authoritarian kind as practiced in China while liberal capitalism is the one associated with democracy.

Milanovic has an interesting theory about the roles of communism in newly independent states, in contrast to the traditional understanding of communism. While communists believe capitalism is a stage of development needed to create a communist society, Milanovic says communism is necessary to create a capitalist society.

Why?

Under colonialism, the economic system was not conducive for capitalism. Newly independent states would need their own indigenous capitalists in order to develop but colonial power was not interested in nurture, and more interested in preserving and strengthening feudal structure to control the local population, and make money for themselves.

Communism worked to abolish feudal structure and freed individuals to become free agents. In a sense, communism gave a colonized society a fresh start. Once the abolition was complete and the economy developed, communism would lose its usefulness and give way to capitalism, which was a superior way to organize a complex economy.

Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor (2017)

Tharoor attempts to debunk the argument that the British was a power for good for India. He does so by listing the many wrongs commited by the colonial authority. Some of them include discriminating qualified locals over unqualified British, worsening ethnic and religion divides, dismantling preexisting societal way of life and creating a corrupt system of government.

This book feels more of a list of arguments, perhaps in the style of The God Delusion. So, it is an easy read, although you might want to get accustomed with general Indian history before reading Inglorious Empire. Perhaps, after a little intro into history, you should read Niall Ferguson’s Empire before diving into Tharoor’s work. After reading all three, then maybe, you would be better able to appreciate the debate about the legacy of the British empire.