Club Lunch: How Malaysia Ended 60 Years of UMNO Rule, and What Is Next

Malaysia’s unlikely opposition coalition surprised itself by winning an election in May that ended six decades in power by the party that had fought for the country’s independence from Britain. Coalition strategist and now deputy defence minister Liew Chin Tong, and Ooi Kee Beng, the head of the think tank for Malaysia’s Penang state, run by the coalition since 2008, will discuss how UMNO’s incumbency and racial politics were overcome, and whether the new government can deliver on the populist promises it made.

Liew Chin Tong was appointed to Malaysia’s senate and government this year. He was a member of parliament for the Democratic Action Party from 2008 till May of this year and was previously the head of the Penang institute.

Dr Ooi Kee Beng is the executive director of the Penang Institute, and the former deputy director of Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. A sinologist who translated Sun Tzu’s Art of War into Swedish, he has studied Asian nation building and Malaysian politics for the last two decades.