Lee Hwok Aun

The Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in its impact and repercussions which are still being felt today. The Southeast Asian region is no exception with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, economic contraction, and increased poverty. The impact varied across the region. Some countries were more effective than others at implementing lockdowns and delivering public health interventions. Pandemic responses were also differentiated by the efficacy of communication, policy coordination, and leadership. Policy evaluations have highlighted the need to improve institutional capacity as well as global and regional cooperation to respond to future public health crises. This timely and crucial volume, authored by leading regional scholars, thoroughly explores these issues and more. It is indispensable reading for anyone interested in Southeast Asia and broader international development challenges.

Forced labour, encompassing various types of coercive practices and rights violations, is an entrenched problem in Malaysia. Recent years have seen more decisive and concerted efforts to resolve the problem and repair Malaysia's damaged reputation, but the country's forced labour woes escalated amid COVID-19, with exposés and trade embargoes in 2020–21. Most consequentially, the US has imposed withhold release orders (WROs) on major rubber glove manufacturers and palm oil producers. For two consecutive years, 2021–22, Malaysia has occupied the lowest Tier 3 in the US Trafficking in Persons report. In November 2021, the country's National Action Plan on Forced Labour (NAPFL), formulated through tripartite engagements with the participation of the International Labour Organization, was launched, with the third National Action Plan on Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP 3.0) operating in tandem. The NAPFL outlines strategies and integrated measures for eventually eliminating forced labour by 2030, which requires systemic solutions commensurate with the magnitude of underlying problems. Forced labour has persisted despite the official termination of labour outsourcing and increased intergovernmental bilateral initiatives to better manage foreign worker flows. Continual challenges in the labour supply industry and the administrative system, including the problematic overlapping powers of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Human Resources, complicate the creation and implementation of a more just, effective and accountable migrant worker system. Government-to-government (G2) agreements, through Memorandum of Understanding, have become the established platform, but are marred by inconsistency and lack of transparency. The new government of Malaysia will need to address deep-seated issues and confront vested interests, domestically and in the labour source countries, to realize the aspiration of eliminating forced labour by 2030.

Malaysia has employed an extensive, constant and embedded Bumiputera preferential regime for several decades, but in recent years, the Bumiputera Economic Transformation Programme was introduced, aimed at building capable and competitive Bumiputera businesses, and reaching out to disadvantaged Bumiputera students. Official rhetoric and public discourse recurrently and erroneously maintain that need-based and merit-based affirmative action have replaced ethnicity-based programmes. The author proposes a systematic framework for integrating need-based selection (prioritizing the disadvantaged or limiting benefits to the already empowered) and merit-based selection (cultivating capable and competitive policy beneficiaries) as enhancements of the Bumiputera preferential regime, taking into account specific conditions and implications from three main policy spheres: higher education, high-level employment, and enterprise development. The article then evaluates the extent need-based and merit-based selection have been incorporated into the regime. Need-based selection remains under-utilized in higher education and wealth ownership to target the disadvantaged and facilitate inter-generational upward mobility, and in enterprise development as a means to curb rent-seeking and facilitate graduation. Merit-based selection has gradually expanded, but can be much more widely applied in all policy spheres, especially in enterprise development. Effective utilization of need and merit considerations bolsters Bumiputera empowerment, and lays foundations for graduating and exiting from overt Bumiputera preference. Formulating transitions away from the current Bumiputera preferential regime will require a systematic approach, integrated with programme-specific analysis.