Moving on from the typical Malay-male pool
All about Malaysia’s curse with slim pickings.
While writing this, I realised that the headline does sound like a play on news portal Malay Mail. Ah, my dad jokes are beginning to manifest!
You’re reading a paid version of The Malaysianist, a newsletter on money and power by writer and journalist Emmanuel Samarathisa.
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It’s that time of the year where the local scuttlebutt is buzzing with possible changes in leadership at various government-owned entities.
“Rumours”, they say. But we’re all suckers for “there’s no smoke without fire”, so I went about asking sources for confirmation.
Usually, during the course of such an exercise, I’ll ping a number of contacts to confirm whether so-and-so is going to be removed and why and who would succeed him or her.
Sometimes I’ll be asked whether I have any names to recommend, in jest of course.
I’ll give one of two answers. It’ll be, “never ask a journalist”, because we are terrible sources for anything, especially life advice. I’m speaking for myself, of course.
The other, “there’s no one from the typical Malay-male pool”.