03 · Columns and essays
In the press
My columns in The Star, Malaysiakini, Focus Malaysia and the New Straits Times.
Opinion pieces written for the press, newest first, each linked to the paper that ran it.
12 columns · Newest first
- Silent struggle: Don't brush off sexual harassment against menOn the harassment that goes unreported because the person it happened to is not who anyone pictures. (opens in a new tab)
- PM term limits welcomed, but dual roles still a concernCapping a prime minister's tenure is the easier half of the reform. Holding a second portfolio at the same time is the half still left open. (opens in a new tab)
- Body image and eating disorders: Glamorisation of skinny body type dangerous and unhealthyOn what a culture teaches a young person to want, and the cost of teaching it so early. (opens in a new tab)
- Social media creates opportunities of child sexual abuse. How do we stop it?The platforms did not invent the harm, but they shortened every distance it used to have to travel. (opens in a new tab)
- Compelling journos to reveal sources thwarts democratic processesWhat a newsroom loses when a source can be compelled out of it, and why that loss is not the newsroom's alone. (opens in a new tab)
- Beyond International Women's Day: A look at Malaysia's legal milestones for gender equalityA reckoning with the statute book rather than the commemorative post: what has actually moved, and what has not. (opens in a new tab)
- Unfathomable attitude towards protection of nation's sovereigntyOn treating sovereignty as a settled possession rather than something that has to be actively defended. (opens in a new tab)
- Guilty of politics, guilty of peaceWritten in the middle of a political crisis, about the price of standing still in one. (opens in a new tab)
- Let's work together to quell the pandemic, revitalise the economyA case, made mid-pandemic, for treating public health and the economy as one problem rather than two competing ones. (opens in a new tab)
- KVDT2: At a higher price via direct negotiations or lower price via open tender?A procurement question asked plainly, because the plain version is the one the public can hold anyone to. (opens in a new tab)
- Looking into the strange case of KhairuddinOn what one prosecution, followed closely, shows about how the rules are applied when nobody is watching the others. (opens in a new tab)
- Time to get it right!An argument for getting the process right the first time, written on the eve of a general election. (opens in a new tab)
