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Daniel Moss clearly struck a raw nerve when he suggested in an opinion piece that Malaysia is stumbling towards failed statehood (Bloomberg, 8th July 2021). Academics weighed in with a discussion on what constitutes a failed state. The opposition seized upon it to beat up on the government. Government ministers were defensive and dismissive. To a weary public, however, the Bloomberg piece said nothing that they themselves have not been saying on social media for some time now.

There is no doubt that the out-of-control pandemic situation has called into question the government’s ability to manage what is undoubtedly the worst national crisis we’ve faced in the more than half a century of our existence as an independent nation. For the first time in a long time, Malaysians are experiencing real hardship; lives are being upended; hope is fading.

While the pandemic and the terrible toll it is taking on our nation is understandably grabbing all the headlines, the reality is that we have been ailing for some time now. The pandemic has merely exposed the deep flaws and strains within our society and the fundamental contradictions that have premised our statehood. The seeds of decay and decline are already everywhere evident.

Our democracy, for one, is in tatters. It didn’t start with the Sheraton Move and the overthrow of a popularly elected government; the rot started when Dr Mahathir Mohamad became prime minister in 1981. He inherited a nation pregnant with promise and left it, after 22 agonizingly long years in office, terribly divided, corrupt and rudderless. He stoked the fires of ethnonationalism that destroyed our sense of common citizenship and unity. He foisted upon the nation a series of mediocre leaders who took the country further and further down the road to ruin. The backdoor government that now sits in Putrajaya is just Mahathir’s chickens coming home to roost.

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