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REFLECTIONS ON MAY 9 & THE WAY FORWARD

ESSAYS BY DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD, NIK NAZMI NIK AHMAD, TONG KOOI ONG, JEFFREY CHEAH, YOON CHON LEONG, YEO BEE YIN, RAFIDAH AZIZ, KHAIRY JAMALUDDIN, HAMDAN ABDUL MAJEED, NICOL DAVID, DR NOOR HISHAM ABDULLAH, SHARAN VALIRAM & MORE

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CONTENTS

14 60 52

64 83 10. EDITOR’S NOTE 14. TIME TO REBUILD

20. 30 40 IT IS THE ECONOMY, PEOPLE! 40. 60. 76. BE PRACTICAL POST-MAY 9, THE UBERISATION 24. RATHER THAN GRAND MALAYSIANS OF HEALTHCARE IN BLUEPRINT NEEDED DESERVE AN MALAYSIA ON DIGITALISING THE EFFECTIVE KEY PILLARS OF THE 52. OPPOSITION ECONOMY WE CAN MAKE 80. THINGS HAPPEN THE CONSUMER, 64. THE ULTIMATE 30. AFTER THE RESET, DISRUPTOR IN EDUCATION REFORM 56. WHAT’S NEXT? LUXURY RETAIL FOR A SUSTAINABLE MOVING MALAYSIA FUTURE FORWARD 72. 83. THE COMEBACK OF THE YEAR IN PHOTOS A POWER HOUSE MALAYSIA

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89 134 103

130 9 7 100 89. THE YEAR IN CARTOONS 94. RECLAIMING REALITY 97. THE VIRTUES OF 107 94 A MORE NATURAL ARCHITECTURE 107. 122. 130. HOW TO SAVE 2018, AS SEEN BY THE COWARDLY THE WEB FIVE ARTISTS FACE OF 100. AUTHORITARIANISM THE ALTERNATIVE TO ARMS 110. 127. THE YEAR IN PHOTOS VENUS WILLIAMS: 134. GLOBAL A PATH TO THE BIG PHISH 103. EMPOWERMENT 20 THINGS THAT HAPPENED FOR THE 118. FIRST TIME IN 2018 THROWING OPEN THE SCHOOLHOUSE DOORS, ONCE AND FOR ALL

8 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

urning Points, a collaboration between ward? What reforms do the people want to see TThe Edge and The New York Times, com- as the government hunkers down to fulfil the prises a collection of articles that look at key promises made during the election campaign? developments, events and trends that spell While eradicating corruption and instituting change and will set a new direction for the true reforms for good governance is a given, year ahead. a top priority must be economic reforms. At The theme of our inaugural issue in 2018 was the end of the day, for the people, everything “Disruption, Disruptors and the Disrupted”. We really comes down to bread and butter issues. asked industry leaders to pen their thoughts History has shown that in many parts of the on technology as a game changer in their re- world, poverty is a cause of social unrest and spective fields, and how it will continue to do discontent. so, going forward. The road ahead will not be easy. The new This year, for Malaysia, we didn’t have to government will have its work cut out. Putting dig very deep to come up with turning points the country’s finances in order is but one of that will define 2019 and beyond. the many major tasks facing the policymakers. To do this, we must start with May 9, 2018. Add to its long to-do list tackling youth un- The 14th general election (GE14) — a momen- employment, reforming the education system tous day that marked what must be one of the and, last but not least, ensuring that Malaysia most significant turning points in the nation’s stays relevant and competitive in an era of history. The booting out of a 61-year-old ruling new digital industrial techonology, in short, coalition, and in its place, a day later, the in- Industry 4.0. stallation of a fledgling new government led More immediately, Malaysia will have to by a seasoned and still sharp-witted politician grapple with fiscal constraints and the mar- — 93-year-old Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. ket turbulence caused by the deferment and As the dust settles on the euphoria of the renegotiation of several big infrastructure people’s victory, 2019 will hopefully see the projects as well as the cleaning up of major beginning of more seismic reforms in the coun- government-linked companies. try — in government, society and the economy. It doesn’t help that the global economy is How do we take this “new” Malaysia for- Continues on page 12

10 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

From page 10 facing mounting headwinds this our spirit and determination to year. Policymakers will face many bring about national recovery,” challenges. Geopolitical tensions, he recalls. a US-China trade war that looks set Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, MP for to escalate further and the end of Setiawangsa and Central Leader- cheap money are but some of the ship Council member for Keadilan, dampeners of growth. believes that to get reforms on Economists see a synchronised track, it must start with the econ- deceleration in growth globally in omy. It is about the economy and 2019, which is set to continue into creating jobs, he says. 2020. This contrasts with 2017/18, On a similar note, Datuk Tong when growth was well spread out Kooi Ong, The Edge Media Group throughout the globe. chairman, concurs that creating The biggest drag will come from jobs and reducing the cost of living slower growth in the world’s two should be at the top of the new largest economies — the US and government’s agenda. To do this, China. In this regard, the consen- he sees the need for a blueprint sus growth forecast for the world on digitalising the key pillars of economy has been revised down- the economy. wards to 3.6% in 2019 and 3.5% in Datuk Yoon Chon Leong, a 2020, from 3.9% in 2018. pioneer in Malaysia’s tech industry Economists have also warned of with more than 40 years of experi- a debt crisis. Several reports have ence under his belt, opines that to pointed out that global debt is now move forward and stay relevant, more than three times the level it Malaysia’s manufacturers must be EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Azam Aris was at 20 years ago. cognisant of the key technological MANAGING EDITOR Anna Taing Rating agency Moody’s, for one, trends in the world and build their EDITOR Jennifer Jacobs EXECUTIVE EDITOR (PRODUCTION) Ooi Inn Leong sees credit risks building up next strategies around them. CHIEF COPY EDITORS Pushpam Sinnakaundan, Mah Pin Pin ASSISTANT CHIEF COPY EDITOR Kenneth Francis Martinus year in some emerging economies This is but just a peek into the SENIOR COPY EDITORS Wong Soon Fah, Marica van Wynen due to slowing growth and tighten- content-rich pages in this issue of COPY EDITOR Lee Mei Geok ART DIRECTOR Sharon Khoh ing liquidity, which will translate Turning Points. A global perspec- ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Lee Wan Yee SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER Wennie Heng into higher funding costs. tive on what will shake and rattle ADVERTISING & MARKETING How will Malaysia ride the tide? in 2019 can be found in the second CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER Sharon Teh (012) 313 9056 In the following pages, a select half of this publication. GENERAL MANAGER Kingston Low (012) 278 5540 SENIOR SALES MANAGERS group of contributors share their Indications point to another ex- Fong Lai Kuan (012) 386 2831 Gregory Thu (012) 376 0614 thoughts on a broad spectrum of citing year: trade wars, debt crisis, SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGERS issues that are in sync with this political upheavals. There will be Shafina Syahrir (017) 281 4787 Shannon Leong (012) 677 5345 year’s theme, “Reflections on May no shortage of drama and trauma. ACCOUNT MANAGERS Lee Soo Sin (012) 710 6220 9 and the Way Forward”. How events will unfold, only time Lum Wai Fong (016) 218 5908 Luqman Ab Rahim (017) 629 0297 In “Time to Rebuild”, Prime Min- will tell. Shaun Lee (012) 658 7245 ister Mahathir reflects on May 9 CREATIVE MARKETING Chris Wong (016) 687 6577 HEAD OF MARKETING SUPPORT & AD TRAFFIC and the tension leading up to the Lorraine Chan announcement of the election re- EMAIL [email protected] sults. And his alarm, after he was CORPORATE PUBLISHER & GROUP CEO Ho Kay Tat sworn in, at the damage that had CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Lim Shiew Yuin

been inflicted on the country’s We welcome your comments, letters and criticism. ANNA TAING PHONE (03) 7721 8000 finances and institutions by the EMAIL [email protected] previous regime. “The enormity Managing Editor, Pseudonyms are allowed but please state your full name, address of the task before us almost broke The Edge and contact number (tel/fax) for us to verify.

12 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

14 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 TIME TO REBUILD The struggle to win was tough, rebuilding Malaysia will be even tougher. BY TUN DR MAHATHIR MOHAMAD

TURNING POINT had never been as tense as I was on the and the setting up of a new government, rul- I night of May 9, which stretched into the ing by decree. Almost meekly, the party ad- 61-year-old morning of May 10. I had led five general elec- mitted defeat and recognised the right of the government tions quite calmly. But not the 14th general victors, their former opposition, to form the defeated, election of Malaysia. government. signalling The results came slowly. Somehow the vic- For our part, we were ready to accuse the new era tories of the then government party came first. former government party of fraud and other It seemed to be winning. wrongdoings and demand that the election It was not until midnight that our party’s vic- results be rejected and a new election held. tories appeared on the screens. Very quickly, it But as it turned out, we had won with a good became clear that we would win. And we won majority. by a bigger majority than we had expected. It was better to accept the results than com- I was sworn in as Prime Minister a day lat- plain about the wrongdoings of the previous er. As I sat down for my first briefing, I was government. True, in some constituencies, the alarmed at the enormity of the task we had to fraud was glaring. We should have won. We face and resolve. lost in these constituencies because of fraud. The previous administration had inflicted But we could complain later. We could go to massive damage on government finances and court and demand a reversal of the results. institutions. On the top of this, we had to work The delight of the majority of the people with administrative machinery that had been over the defeat of the former government party corrupted by the previous prime minister. was obvious. Everywhere big crowds gathered, We soon realised that the issues we had blowing whistles and trumpets, firing crackers raised to gain the support of the voters were and fireworks and cheering the winners with nothing compared with the reality. We only great enthusiasm. But there was no violence. knew the tip of the iceberg. The reality was Everyone saw a New Malaysia. For 61 years, far worse. since Independence, the country had been We shuddered at the thought of the damage ruled by one party; the party that won inde- that a victory for the previous government par- pendence from the British. No one really be- ty would have wrought. For sure, the country lieved that this party, so popular before, could would have become bankrupt. lose. It was too powerful. Ruling parties have The enormity of the task before us almost the machinery of government to give them broke our spirit and determination to bring strength. about national recovery. And the long-time Malaysian ruling party But we had won. Against all odds, we had knew all the tricks and had the use of gov- won. And we had won handsomely. The ernment personnel and institutions to back stunned former government party must have it. Old and established, it had money aplenty. been more shocked than we were. The expected As we suspected, the money was looted by a rejection of a small defeat by the government prime minister who also headed the govern- party and the possible declaration of a state ment coalition. of emergency did not take place. But that was its undoing. Believing that “cash Certainly, they could have engineered riots is king”, it neglected campaigning to defend

REUTERS and disorder to justify a suspension of the laws and explain its policies. Instead, it depended

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 15 16 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 on bribing the electorate. Believing that the Dr Mahathir’s historic police and anti-corruption agency would close press conference when their eyes to the blatant buying of votes and the opposition declared victory for the first time in lavish gift-giving, they lost the respect of the Malaysian history electorate. They failed to counter the opposition party’s campaign and the dislike of the people for the financial and other scandals linked to the leaders of the then government party. They totally failed to understand the hardships of the people caused by the new taxes, high cost of living and high rate of unemployment. The desire for a change in government among the people was far stronger than we had been led to believe. Hence, the unexpectedly good majority achieved by the then opposition. And this was achieved despite the officers of the Election Commission not adhering to proper procedures. For example, even when an opposition candidate scored a clear majority and a recount was not needed, a recount was ordered. In several cases, the recounts resulted in the winners losing.

PUTTING IN THE REFORMS But all these are matters of the past. Now our task is to rebuild our government. We have to restore democracy and the rule of law. These are our top priority as the new government. The governing system, which we had held dear since Independence, had mutated into a self-serving machinery to save only one man. Hence, our efforts from now on must concen- trate on returning Malaysia to the people. One of my earliest decisions made right after the general election was the establishment of the Council of Eminent Persons. It was established to advise the government on not only strengthening the checks and balances within the system but also improving the measures to fight corruption and restore our economic well-being. In addition, we intend to ensure that the power of the prime minister is limited and less open to abuse. Parliament will play a bigger role in the governance of the country. Senior officials will be vetted by parliament before the appointment. Hence, they will no longer be obliged to the prime minister for their appointment or promotion. The current Cabinet is smaller than that of the previous government, yet it is filled with able politicians out to prove themselves worthy of being chosen as leaders by the voters. I put my faith in all of them, even though only a handful have the experience of being full-

SAM FONG/THE EDGE fledged ministers.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 17 On top of everything else, the country is lic Prosecutor from that of the Attorney-Gener- Ready to take off facing debts of more than RM1 trillion — a sum al. This will minimise any conflicts of interest unheard of less than a decade ago. These huge when it comes to cases involving the wrong- debts, which were incurred by the previous doing of the government. government, must be dealt with as quickly Malaysians from all walks of life want clo- as possible. A few of the projects with China sure on the 1MDB scandal. It is imperative had to be halted for us to renegotiate better that we do our level best to bring back all terms for the loans incurred by the previous the money stolen by the perpetrators. We government. have confiscated a few assets bought using We have had to defer or cancel some of these the stolen money and initiated mutual legal grandiose projects. When these problems have assistance with other countries and interna- been alleviated, then we can return the country tional bodies. to normal. We want those who had failed in their duty Draconian laws, which limit the freedom to safeguard the nation’s interests to be ac- of the people and the media and are against countable for their actions and be brought to human rights, will be repealed. Debates in justice. Our nation’s credibility is at stake and parliament will not be restricted while the its integrity held to ransom by a select few. powerful Public Accounts Committee is now The struggle to overthrow the kleptocratic Tun Dr Mahathir headed by a member of the opposition. government was tough. But it is nothing com- Mohamad is the Prime We want to ensure the transparency of our pared with the struggle to rebuild Malaysia. Minister of Malaysia government. We will not hide behind the Of- Once upon a time, Malaysia was described as ficial Secrets Act. an Asian Tiger. Now we not only have to restore Over the last several years, the judiciary this image but are expected to surpass it. has been hit by accusations of abuse in the Governments do not stay popular for long. appointments of the Chief Justice and the At- Governments must act and they just cannot torney-General. We have addressed that by please everyone. Soon, the honeymoon will replacing them with more neutral candidates. be over. But God willing, before the glamour We are serious in bringing about a more in- is lost, we will have succeeded in setting the dependent judiciary. nation on the path to be a developed country

We also aim to separate the office of the Pub- as envisioned in our Vision 2020. REUTERS

18 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

20 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 IT IS THE ECONOMY, PEOPLE! The Pakatan Harapan government must articulate a new growth story and create jobs that take us into the future.

BY NIK NAZMI NIK AHMAD

TURNING POINT he year 2018 was remarkable but also Tchallenging for Malaysia. It is unfortunate Getting back on that we had to close the historic year with the track by focusing twin controversies of the International Conven- on things that tion on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial matter Discrimination (ICERD) and the Seafield Sri Maha Mariamman Temple saga. Both incidents, however, should reinforce the need for reforms in the country. The core of problems such as the Seafield Hindu temple dispute is administrative. Suc- cessive governments have failed to make urban issues like spatial planning and development and the regulations for building places of worship more transparent, equitable and accountable.

WHAT WENT WRONG WITH ICERD Likewise, I do not believe that it is wrong for Malaysia to sign and ratify ICERD, if it does not require us to amend our Federal Constitution. Anyway, we can always make reservations and interpretive declarations on how ICERD would apply to us, especially with regards to the special position of bumiput- The anti-ICERD eras and Islam’s place as the religion of the demonstration in Kuala Federation. ICERD would have also helped

FOTOBERNAMA Lumpur on Nov 4, 2018 bumiputeras address the discrimination they

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 21 are proven to face in the private sector. we need is to make the changes we want for It is simply the right thing to do. The problem our country to be sustainable. was with how we sequenced it. Pakatan Harapan is in power federally now. IT IS THE ECONOMY The Federal Government of Malaysia has im- Like it or not, it starts with the economy. mense powers. We certainly should use our Why did Brexit and Donald Trump come after time in office to do good things. the Tony Blair and Barack Obama eras in the But government power —in and of itself — UK and the US? Why are Parisians taking to is not absolute. This is true in Malaysia and the streets in anger yet again just over a year indeed in all countries. There are certain things after voting Emmanuel Macron and his La Ré- that no government — no matter how powerful publique En Marche party into power? It was — can bulldoze through. because these great, progressive moments Pakatan Harapan failed to prepare the ground were not accompanied by socio-economic adequately for ICERD. Our leaders and sup- justice in those countries. porters assumed that it was simply enough Western economies have ironically become for the executive to will it to happen. more unequal over the years. The fears of That was wrong. We should have engaged majority communities over their status were civil society, including religious leaders and exploited by populist reactionaries to wreak moderate non-governmental organisations electoral havoc against the centre. As it is, more. We should have had a strategy to com- the majority has not benefited much, even as municate what we wanted and come up with a the minorities have become more embattled. timetable to work by. Instead, we empowered The same thing could happen in Malaysia. not only the opposition but also the reactionary Witness how quick certain parties have been elements in our society that had previously to exploit ICERD and other controversies for been in retreat. their gain. Am I saying that we should postpone so- Pakatan Harapan needs to get itself back on cio-political reforms indefinitely? That we track by focusing on the things that matter. should not even try? No, certainly not. Our time in government JOBS, JOBS, JOBS will be a failure if we do not make Malaysia a I repeat: it is the economy. Ordinary Malaysians freer, more open and united country. are struggling. They are being squeezed. Still, Pakatan Harapan cannot forget that it We are still too reliant on the vagaries of only won around 30% of the Malay-Muslim commodity prices. The Pakatan Harapan gov- vote. Moreover, we did not win any parliamen- ernment has yet to articulate a new growth tary seats in Kelantan, Terengganu or the Ma- story to take us into the future. lay-Melanau constituencies in Sarawak. We also Indebtedness is still a problem. A survey performed poorly in Pahang and the west coast by Bank Negara Malaysia’s Credit Counsel- of Peninsular Malaysia, from Perlis to Perak. ling and Debt Management Agency (AKPK) It is true that these demographics should not has highlighted that three out of 10 Malaysian be able to dictate to the wider nation. But it working adults earn less than RM2,000 a month should highlight that Pakatan Harapan needs to and have to borrow money to buy essential move prudently, especially when it touches on goods. The recent budget was good because wedge issues such as race and religion. What it avoided the worst excesses of austerity.

22 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 Indeed, the government should not burden If repressive laws such as the Sedition Act the people before it tightens its own belt. The cannot be done away with immediately, then Nik Nazmi Nik Caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab reportedly once Pakatan Harapan should not let up on working Ahmad is MP for said, “Do not cut the hand of the thief who with stakeholders to create credible replace- Setiawangsa and a Central Leadership steals dates in the year of famine.” ments that will not be easily abused. Harmony Council member of Every sen the government can spare should in Malaysia must be protected, but it must be Parti Keadilan Rakyat. go to social safety nets for the B40 and M40, done in a way that does not harm civil liberties. He was a two-term rather than on vanity projects. The most impor- And we must continue to fight corruption state assemblyman in tant task of the Pakatan Harapan government and wastage as well as make government ac- Selangor and the first youth leader of Pakatan should be jobs, jobs and jobs. countable to ordinary Malaysians. Economic Harapan. His latest We must work on this in tandem with in- development must go hand in hand with ad- book, 9 May 2018: creasing political freedoms and civil liberties. ministrative and socio-political reforms. Notes from the Frontline, When all is said and done, we need to reduce It will be a difficult and long journey. But I do is available online and impunity to protect ordinary Malaysians from believe it is the best way to create a truly New in major bookstores.

SHAHRIN YAHYA/THE EDGE SHAHRIN YAHYA/THE the caprices of the wealthy and powerful. Malaysia. We must get to work — and soon.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 23 BLUEPRINT NEEDED ON DIGITALISING THE KEY PILLARS OF THE ECONOMY Smart use of digital technologies can lower cost of living and leave more money in the hands of the people. BY TONG KOOI ONG

he peaceful revolution by the people TURNING and diverse needs and aspirations of the peo- Tthrough the ballot box, which threw out POINT ple, in line with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. a 61-year-old governing party on May 9, 2018, The most basic and fundamental is phys- means different things to different people. Economic iological needs for human survival, of food, For me, it was an immediate relief. Relief progress can no shelter and clothing. Next is safety, security, in the knowledge that had it been otherwise, longer depend on law and order, and freedom from fear. This my life would be more miserable with more the old levers of is followed by the need for interpersonal re- intimidation and threats and we were already growth lationships of friendship, trust, acceptance warned that The Edge might be closed down. and family. Then comes the need for esteem, For others, they may have voted against Ba- respect, recognition and freedom. And finally risan Nasional (BN) out of anger, or a desire to self-actualisation of the desire to become the improve their lives, on issues of governance, most one can be. fairness and freedom, against corruption and The first necessary step for the Pakatan Hara- many other reasons. pan government to take is to create jobs and And many may now feel entitled that their lower the cost of living. reasons for voting for the change in government should now be addressed. This will inevitably HOW CAN IT BE DONE? lead to conflicting demands and disappoint- Since 1960, the economic growth of Malaysia ments. can be roughly broken up into four stages (see To mitigate the above risks, it may be use- Chart 1). ful for us to consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of From 1960 to 1980, the drivers of growth Needs in terms of prioritising what needs to be were investments into infrastructure and urgently addressed and what could perhaps commodities. From 1980 to 2000, growth was be deferred. Personally, I believe the imposition of the CHART 1 Goods and Services Tax (GST) did the most damage to BN. It was the manifestation of the 1,400,000 GDP (RM MIL) pain imposed on the people, made necessary Investment Manufacturing, Com- Government 1,200,000 (Infrastructure + industrialisation, modities spending + by the mismanagement and theft of the coun- commodities) urbanisation boom consumption try’s resources by the then ruling party, as 1,000,000

exemplified by 1Malaysia Development Bhd. Government expenditure 800,000 Many may not fully understand 1MDB, but Personal consumption expenditure Investment they understood “theft” and the resulting hard- 600,000 ship it caused the people when funds and re- Net exports sources had to be directed to cover-up these 400,000 losses. Their anger was compounded by the publicity given to how the stolen money was 200,000

lavishly spent. - Herein lies, perhaps, the prescription of how

the country should proceed to meet the various (200,000) WORLD BANK 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016

24 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 led by investments in manufacturing, which CHART 2 Domestic credit to private sector as % of GDP: resulted in industrialisation and urbanisation. China & developing countries The country benefited from a commodity price boom from 2000 to 2008. 180 % OF GDP Finally, government spending and private 160 sector consumption were the main drivers of 140 economic growth from 2008 to 2017. This re- 120 sulted in fiscal debt already in excess of RM1 100 trillion while household debt has also risen 80 China 60 significantly. What this means is that many Malaysia of the levers of growth have been exhausted. 40 Singapore Net exports (as a percentage of GDP) have also 20 Indonesia Thailand been falling, with imports growing at a faster 0 rate than exports. A comprehensive analysis is 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 necessary to understand and reverse this trend. A look at the major export components pro- My hypothesis is that these areas are likely vides a quick perspective. Exports of electrical to be in digital technologies, the food industry and electronic goods, LNG and palm oil have (especially halal food), tourism and leisure, all stagnated. While overall exports of manufac- renewable energy, packaging industries, mo- tured goods have risen slightly, some sub-sec- bility and certain new commodities such as tors have contracted, such as wood products, coconuts. And I am sure there are many more furniture, textiles and wearing apparel. possibilities. It is natural that old sectors may decline Surely, job opportunities are going to be chal- over time. But new industries must be found, lenging with declining net exports caused by supported and encouraged by the government. stagnating manufacturing and commodities What are these industries? Competitive ad- sectors, which in turn is related to the relatively vantages are rarely natural but require a con- weak growth in loans to the private sector to certed effort to identify and execute, by both fund investments (see Chart 2).

the private and public sectors. More and better paying jobs are only going WORLD BANK LOW YEN YEING/THEEDGEPROPERTY.COM,

26 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 to be available if the private sector makes the CHART 3 necessary investments. The government can help with the right incentives and regulatory Restaurants and hotels Miscellaneous goods & services Education frameworks to allow the marketplace to op- Recreation services & culture erate competitively and innovatively and to Food & non-alcoholic facilitate change. Communication beverages The government-linked investment com- 29.5% panies (GLICs) can help too. Here is where I believe is the true role of the GLICs — to be Transport the catalyst for and help crystalise these new 14.6% Alcoholic beverages investments and industries. Holding major & tobacco stakes in and running companies that compete Clothing & footwear Health directly with the private sector only serves to 23.8% Furnishings, household equipment & crowd out the private sector and discourage Housing, water, electricity, routine household maintenance new investments. gas & other fuels Besides better employment opportunities to improve the lives of the people, it is also necessary to reduce the cost of living. Giving choice For Malaysians earning above RM10,000 a to consumers month, their average monthly savings is around on how and when to RM250. This drops to below RM100 a month for spend-invest those with incomes of between RM4,000 and RM10,000 monthly. Savings fall further, to just 5 about RM40 a month for those with incomes Leveraging & Thereby investing into increasing below RM4,000 a month. These are numbers ac- digital CHART 4 disposable cording to the Department of Statistics Malaysia. technologies, A BETTER SOLUTION incomes It is shocking that discretionary income in AI, big data DRIVE SUPPLY-SIDE Malaysia is this low. Why is it so? It is because 1 CHANGES 4 household debt is high, especially since 2008. THROUGH About 40% of disposable incomes are used DIGITALISATION to service loans for homes and vehicles (see Chart 3). Another 35% or so goes to food. Shift from Effectively To address cost of living, therefore, we need ownership to freeing people to focus on these three areas. sharing- from high borrowings and How can we reduce the costs of housing, subscription economy interest transportation and food? servicing I believe the answer lies in driving sup- 2 3 ply-side changes using digital technologies. That is, we need to digitalise the economy, which will result in deleveraging the house- of digital technologies into other aspects of hold through the co-sharing and subscription our everyday life can help reduce the cost of Tong Kooi Ong is models. This will, in turn, reduce the cost of mobility and food. For example, Grab recently chairman of The Edge borrowings and effectively give each household introduced a monthly subscription for frequent Media Group a major boost in discretionary income. users of its rides and food delivery services, These savings will either increase our nation- which offers savings of up to 55%. al savings rate (which has fallen from 40% to If we raise the utilisation rate and efficiency 30% since 2008) or stimulate demand and eco- of our transport and logistics assets through nomic growth. See our illustration in Chart 4. digitalisation, costs will fall and the result is It is in the above context that EdgeProp Sdn lower fares for users. When that happens, cost Bhd recently launched the FundMyHome solu- of living drops, leaving the people with higher tion. Homeowners only need to pay 20% to fully disposable incomes, even if their wages do own and use their homes. The balance of 80% is not go up or go up by a little. funded by investors, in return for a share of the A clear blueprint on digitalising the impor- eventual capital gains (much like Islamic financ- tant pillars of the economy must be quickly put ing). As there is no loan involved, homeowners in place by the PH government or it could end have no mortgages or interest costs to pay. up disappointing those who have high hopes

DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS DEPARTMENT Similarly, I believe increasing the application that their lives will improve after May 9.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 27

EDUCATION REFORM FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE Reforming the education sector is no longer a choice; it is the only way forward. BY TAN SRI JEFFREY CHEAH

If your plan is for one year, plant rice. TURNING If your plan is for 10 years, plant trees. POINT If your plan is for 100 years, educate children. — attributed to Confucius The World Economic Forum says 65% of am firmly convinced that education offers children entering I the optimum route out of poverty, a con- primary school viction I came to in my days growing up in a today will work in small town called Pusing, Perak. I witnessed jobs that do not the impact of poverty on families and how it exist now closed off avenues for advancement, especially in education, for many of my childhood friends. Reflecting on global trends, I wonder whether our largely analogue-era education system in Malaysia is adequately preparing our children for the digital age. In fact, the World Economic Forum says 65% of children entering primary school today will eventually work in jobs that do not even exist now. How do we prepare our younger generation for an uncertain future in a rapidly changing world? For a start, let’s acknowledge that re-ex- amining how we teach, what we teach and where we teach is no longer an option, but an urgent imperative. In a future expected to be dominated by robots and artificial intelligence — I believe and share the views of US educationist Joseph E Aoun that — we must shift our focus in education from instilling “mental furniture”, or bodies of knowledge, to promoting “mental architecture”, or mindsets trained to advance cognitive capacities such as critical thinking, systems thinking, entrepreneurship and cultural agility. Second, in a world where knowledge is easily and instantaneously available, the concept KENNY YAP/THE EDGE KENNY YAP/THE

30 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 31 of life-long learning takes on new meaning. Education does not end with graduation and a scroll. Indeed, according to futurist Alvin Toffler: “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Hence, it is crucial that we design an education system that teaches our children to nurture their imagination and curiosity. That helps them inculcate the mindset and habits of life-long learning. Just observe two-year-olds as they begin to display natural curiosity. Now, fast-forward two decades and many of these children would be leaving university with their curiosity and imagination all but quashed by a system designed to promote conformity and standardisation (vital for the Industrial Age). But imagination, curiosity and creativity are exactly the type of traits that are crucial for us in the age of machines. These are what set humans apart and give us the upper hand over machines and these skills are the province of the arts and humanities. Thus, we need an education system that moves from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) to STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading and wRiting, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). Apart from that, there is a need to nurture qualities such as leadership, passion, team- work and inclusiveness. Inclusiveness in Ma- laysia and Asia is especially important due to our diversity and genetic makeup. These attributes are increasingly cited by companies as what they are looking for in hiring talents. The sports arena provides an ideal crucible to forge these character traits. We need a higher emphasis on sports and in this context, it is disappointing to note the number of padangs shaped by the values we adopt and inculcate. (playing fields) that are disappearing on our What are some of these values that we can shores. impress on our young? Well, at Sunway, our In short, we need a system that takes into core values are integrity, humility and ex- account not just the changes in our econom- cellence. Add to those other values such as ic, social and technological landscapes, but tolerance, compassion, empathy, gratitude, one that is designed to rewire the brains of courtesy, respect and a disciplined work ethic. our younger generation. That would include This is particularly relevant at this moment experimenting not only with the curricula but in time. Over the last 200 years, the world has also classroom design, the role of teachers, enjoyed great economic growth. This progress the family environment and making quality and prosperity are remarkable, but they have education accessible and affordable. In oth- come at a cost. We are now struggling to cope er words, we need a holistic approach and a with the social, environmental and economic comprehensive reform agenda. challenges that growth has brought in its wake. Third, I fully support the call by Prime Min- We are testing the finite limits of the planet’s ister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for our edu- ecological system. And rising inequality and cation system to encompass the teaching and widening wealth disparity threaten to under- instilling of good values in our youth. It is often mine the structure of our societies and the

said that character is destiny. And character is cohesion of our communities. AFP

32 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 The education system today is not equipped to prepare students for a world dominated by robots and AI

Overcoming these challenges will require should be chaired by the prime minister of more than knowledge and skills. They demand the day. a change in mindsets and the cultivation of The committee should include relevant the right values. ministries — for instance, education; human resources; health; international trade and in- SO, HOW NOW? dustry; and women, family and community To reform our education system, we first need development. It should rope in representatives to identify the issues, establish where we are from other key stakeholders — industry, civil currently at and chart a route to our final des- society, community associations, experts and, tination. We have had a lot of studies, a lot critically important, youth groups. of suggestions, even numerous blueprints. In effect, this would be a committee that over- However, it often appears that the relevant sees the knowledge sector from an integrated stakeholders are seldom on the same page. and cross-domain perspective. It would iden- In fact, it often seems like they are not even tify strategic objectives, specify and monitor in the same book! implementation plans and, most importantly, A couple of my suggestions: For a start, measure outcomes. I would urge the government to set up a Clearly, the state is the sole institution with high-powered committee on education which, the requisite resources to pull all this together. given how crucial this sector is to the nation, But the government’s role should be focused

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 33 on creating the right ecosystem, nurturing and seem to like what we are doing. The number of playing managing it effectively rather than on specific Here is just one example regarding classroom fields are disappearing and parochial targets. design, teaching methods and curriculum. We throughout Malaysia For example, it is not the government’s job have built the Sunway Innovation Labs and the to raise the rankings of Malaysian universities. Makerspace. These are places where they can Instead, create the right ecosystem, provide learn design thinking and the entrepreneurial a level playing field and allow competition to mindset — skills that are not emphasised in work its magic. the classroom but essential for their relevance. Second, our Technical Vocational Education With these spaces, it is our hope that students and Training (TVET) programme needs a vital can work on projects that engage them in solv- shot in the arm. It should be rebranded as a ing real-world problems. path to employment on par with avenues pro- With this, they can develop deep content vided by academic credentials. At present, the knowledge as well as critical thinking, crea- perception is that TVET is focused too heavily tivity and communication skills in the context on skills training providers and bureaucrats, of doing an authentic, meaningful project. Pro- rather than on the two most critical components ject-based learning unleashes a contagious, of the programme — industry and the students. creative energy among students and teachers. TVET must be industry-led, period. And its I should add that these gathering places are No 1 key performance indicator must be the far different from traditional classroom settings. employability of its graduates. Overhauling They allow for free mingling — spaces to take this programme requires more than piecemeal a break and relax and create a vibe that helps fixes that only tinker with the margins. promote creativity. There may be those who argue that the gov- At a time when innovation has been over- ernment cannot afford to undertake many of whelmingly identified as the most powerful the measures I have suggested because of driver of prosperity of a nation, a corporation Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah is fiscal constraints. I think that is a mistaken and a community, we must do everything we founder and chairman assumption. The real question is: Can we af- can to create the conditions that promote in- of the Sunway Group and chancellor of ford NOT to? teractions and spark imaginations. Sunway University, But while education is about preparing our a QS 5-star overall THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION young to provide for the material well-being world-rated private Here at Sunway City Kuala Lumpur, we are of themselves and their families in an uncer- university. He is also already experimenting with some of these tain future, it also transcends that endeavour. founding trustee of the Jeffrey Cheah ideas at our three educational institutions Education is about preparing our future gen- Foundation, the largest — Sunway University, Sunway College and erations to live fulfilled lives, in every sense social enterprise for

Sunway International School. And the students of the word. education in Malaysia AFP

34 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 35 Xxxxx

Oxygenation is the persuit of sustainability, to see possibilities and innovate solutions because property developement is not just about the look and feel but also about how we breathe life into the home, community and City of iconic landmarks environment. -Mohainee Tahir

MOHD SHAHRIN YAHYA/THE EDGE

36 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 NUR ISMAIL PHOTOGRAPHY Putrajaya Holdings ventures into the heart of KL

utrajaya Holdings (PjH) was incor- residential units available for the public there too.” porated as a private entity some 23 Putrajaya is a very liveable city, Mohainee adds. years ago specifi cally to undertake the About 40% of the area is reserved for green spac- Pdevelopment of Putrajaya. The brain- es and all infrastructure is properly maintained. child of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, For example, Putrajaya Lake is maintained at a who was prime minister at the time, the city was water quality level of Class 2B satisfactory for primarily developed to replace Kuala Lumpur as body-contact activities such as swimming. the country’s administrative capital. “Sustainable development was unheard-of in It may be an award-winning township today but the country when we implemented the concept in Putrajaya was nowhere near its current form before Putrajaya. Developers typically want to dedicate as PjH stepped in, says Mohainee Tahir, who is general many square footage of land to revenue generation manager at Putrajaya Ventures Division. to maximise their profi t. Provision of green spaces “When we fi rst came to Putrajaya, the area was and facilities such as schools are typically in com- fi lled with oil palm plantations. There was a river pliance with planning approvals only. fl owing through it that was so tiny that you could “In Putrajaya, about 40% of the city is for the just step across it. The river was later fl ooded and provision of facilities, parks and open spaces. This is now known as the Putrajaya Lake,” she recalls. was not common at that point in time. For example, This man-made lake has been recognised by Un- we invested in Putrajaya Wetlands so that it could esco as an eco-hydrology demonstration site and as act as an effi cient fi ltering system that would prevent an example of integrated lake basin management the lake from becoming polluted and stagnant. That Jambatan Seri Wawasan under its International Hydrological Programme. was something we invested in even though we knew PjH, as the concession holder, landowner and it was not profi t-making,” says Mohainee. master developer, built the city with initial funding Today, PjH is taking its expertise outside Putra- from its main shareholder, Petroliam Nasional Bhd jaya’s borders. The company is venturing out to Kuala (Petronas). Construction offi cially commenced in Lumpur and Sepang with a new corporate slogan: 1996, and three years later, PjH delivered the offi ce “Oxygenation: Breathing Life into the Nation”. of the prime minister, also known as Perdana Putra. According to Mohainee, oxygenation signifi es In February 2001, the city was offi cially declared the PjH’s ability to create exciting environments in third federal territory. fi ve ways: breathing life into ideas, breathing life “In exchange for building the necessary in- into living, breathing life into vibrancy, breathing frastructure — the buildings, the roads, and the life into the community and breathing life into the bridges — PjH was given the concession to devel- environment. op Putrajaya’s commercial and public paid-entity “Oxygenation is the pursuit of sustainability, to components,” says Mohainee. see possibilities and innovate solutions because Contrary to popular belief, Putrajaya is not just property development is not just about the look for those working for the government, she stresses. and feel but also about how we breathe life into “The civil servants are just the base population. the home, community and environment. It’s about Even when building the government quarters, we creating a nice home for you to live in, entirely A community-centric place did not create enclaves between the government dedicated to your wellness and pleasure with fa- and the public. Both components were interspersed cilities that you can easily access. This is something between one another. So, when we were building the we try to embody in every project we undertake,” government quarters, we made sure that there were she explains.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 37 Ampang’s hidden gem Last year, PjH announced that it had acquired two pieces of land in the heart of KL. One of them is the previous site of the French embassy. The other fronts Jalan Ampang, adjacent to the Chinese embassy, and is currently the site for a new serviced apartment project with 429 units. According to Mohainee, the project is located at the lower density of this stretch of Jalan Ampang, which gives it value distinction. Also, this stretch of Ampang has easy access to the KL city centre, which is perfect for those living an active lifestyle as they will be spoilt for choice when planning their activities from dawn to dusk. The project is located close to endless gastronomic options, ranging from stalls oﬀ ering authentic local food to internationally acclaimed Michelin-starred restaurants and award-winning bars and lounges. It is also in the proximity of a key retail therapy hub that comprises Suria KLCC, Robinson KL and Pavilion, to name but a few. Apart from being near the party scenes in Bukit Bintang, residents are also within the vicinity of prominent night club Zouk at TREC KL. During the weekends, residents can unwind by heading over to various parks nearby, such as the KLCC Park, KL Forest Eco Park and Titiwangsa Lake Park. Those looking for other sports and recreational activities can explore either the Royal Selangor Polo Level 45 — rendezvous @ Sky Lounge with the city as the backdrop Club, Royal Selangor Golf Club or the Raintree Club of Kuala Lumpur, all of which are within a short driving ARTIST’S IMPRESSION distance. The project boasts an unobstructed view of the Kuala Lumpur city skyline, golf course greenery and Ampang’s high-end condominiums. On Level 26, residents can access The Cloud Nine, a unique space where residents can celebrate their special occasions without worrying about space constraints. Additionally, the place is equipped with living, dining and kitchen facilities. The project also comes with a 50m saltwater pool, which is a good alternative to traditional chlorinated pools. As only a small amount of natural chlorine is used, irritation to swimmers’ skin and eyes is greatly reduced. Such pools also do not have a strong chlorine smell and are thus better for those with asthma and allergies. “A lot of thought has been given to how people would feel living here. The units are not necessarily huge but they are comfortable. The bedroom, for example, is bigger and luxurious because we know that’s what residents want — a comfortable space to rest,” says Mohainee. The apartments are targeted at young working pro- Verde@9 fessionals. They could be working for the oil and gas Exclusive green oasis only accessible by garden units at Level 9

38 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 ARTIST’S IMPRESSION

ARTIST’S IMPRESSION While these parents may own luxury homes that can more than accommodate their families, their adult children may want more privacy and desire their own space. By buying a unit at the project, their children can enjoy their independence while still being fairly close to home. Mohainee says she is looking forward to launching the project in the second quarter of next year. Moving

The Sea @ Level 26 forward, she says a project is also being planned on the other site. Splash around ‘The Sea’ with breathtaking aerial views According to her, PjH is considering developing sector or they could be medical doctors or international “something special there as well”. As this project will school teachers who are members of the Malaysia be right across the road from the Ampang project, My Second Home programme or fi nancial institu- the latter’s residents will be able to enjoy the future tion professionals such as fund managers, fi nancial facilities that will be developed on this site. analysts, fi nancial brokers and investment bankers. PjH is also working on several other projects. It has “These are the people who are required to work acquired a piece of land in Bagan Lalang, Sepang, round the clock. For example, as there are a number which is intended to be developed into a resort and of hospitals around the area, including Gleneagles and destination township. Prince Court, there might be a lot of on-call doctors The development will off er a mixture of leisure, who may want to have a temporary place where they commercial, institutional and residential elements. can rest whenever they need,” says Mohainee. Currently, the fi rst component of the project — a 27- Additionally, the serviced apartments cater for par- hole eco-link golf course — is already in the early ents living in the affl uent neighbourhoods nearby. stage of design and planning.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 39 BE PRACTICAL RATHER THAN GRAND If we are to succeed, we need to simplify our approach and leverage present strengths. BY DATUK YOON CHON LEONG

ver the last few decades, much had been TURNING tech sector, and our participation was greatly Otouted about Malaysia’s industrial per- POINT welcomed as we offered a very attractive path formance. It had been credited as one of the key towards their rapid expansion plans. Those of contributors in transforming the country from Malaysia should us who had a good command of English, who essentially an agriculture and mining-driven double down on could communicate and who had a reasonable economy to a much higher value-added man- present strengths education were given attractive opportunities ufacturing one. rather than to develop through extensive training and ex- In the early years, Malaysia was one of the abandoning them posure programmes. so-called “tiger economies”. Its peers included in favour of the Our main regional competitor then was China, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. new, new thing Singapore, which offered pretty much simi- However, the last decade saw a gradual slow- lar capabilities and cost. The other countries down in comparative competitiveness, which in the region were considered less attractive. has led to what is called the “middle-income As a result, wages and responsibilities grew. trap”. Over time, the responsibilities for manufac- This means Malaysia is faced with very turing automation and quality improvements In the early years, slow or stagnant per capita income increase were transferred to us. This caused some of Malaysia was one of rather than much higher economic growth. In the so-called “tiger the more entrepreneurial employees to leave short, our value-add from Malaysian workers economies” their multinational corporation (MNC) cocoons has stopped growing. Worse still, many analysts have started comparing the country’s economic performance with that of a lower rung cohort of nations such as Vietnam and Cambodia — seemingly having given up on Malaysia’s ability to keep up with the original tiger economies. How true is this and how did we get to this point. What can we do about it? Many say Malaysia is currently experiencing what is known as the middle-income trap. Is this true? If so, how long before we overcome it? This is a very difficult question, but one that needs to be answered. To give some perspective, I would like to share some of my views, which come from more than four decades of experience in the technology sector of many countries. In the early stages of my career, the industrial world was a very different place. In Malaysia, we mostly worked for foreign companies, which were mostly from developed countries that had invested in factories here to benefit from our incentives and low labour costs. At the time, developed countries were ex-

periencing great growth, particularly in the REUTERS

40 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 to build automation start-ups with the purpose with Malaysian student populations to identify After being a major of serving the same industry that spawned talent and make sure they were being properly manufacturing hub them. Today, these start-ups have transformed prepared to become future professionals. for the electrical and electronics sector, into successful large local companies that are We call this our never ending “milk runs”. Penang started to suffer spearheading Malaysia’s manufacturing tech- What I found from this experience was that from a production labour nology development. top performers everywhere were pretty similar shortage Between the mid-1990s and 2000s, things in potential at the academic level. However, started to change. Other countries in the region communication skills and practical competenc- — for example, Thailand — started to become es differ between local and foreign students. more attractive, especially in terms of cost and While there was indeed a larger population availability of labour. Malaysia and Singapore, of academically excellent students from local with their established manufacturing compe- universities, they normally needed significantly tencies, were challenged to move up the value more investment in skills re-alignment once chain while having to move some of the high they entered the workplace. labour content operations away. I found myself regularly debating with my I still remember, when I was a manager foreign counterparts, who were trying to defend at a large MNC, I was faced with two major their concerns that while local professionals problems — the shortage of production labour, were cheaper from a salary standpoint, the making it hard to justify keeping operations lower productivity as a result of higher invest- here, and the inability to scale skilled talent to ment in training, poorer communication skills backfill the production labour being transferred and the cost of mistakes made it hard to justify or automated out. transferring the higher value-added work here. For example, I was given the responsibility This situation became even more difficult of ensuring that our company had a strong by the 2010s with the rise of China (and to pipeline of relevant talent to fill future require- some extent, Singapore). We were faced with ments. I had to travel all over the country and a country that had both abundance of low-cost

the world every year to work with universities labour and depth of available talent. MOHD NAZAM/THE EDGE MOHD IZWAN

42 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 PATRICK GOH/THE EDGE UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

43 In addition, China had developed a very deep as quickly as possible. In my opinion, there are After all these years, supply chain with its local companies support- four tech trends that we should be cognisant Malaysia still does not ing a huge array of solutions needed by MNCs. of and develop our strategies around. have a competitive IC fabrication industry Singapore, meanwhile, had essentially moved The first is in advanced materials. Natural away from low-cost manufacturing into R&D-in- raw materials are no longer capable of meeting tensive and high-technology manufacturing. the demands of an increasingly sophisticated By comparison, the local supply chain part- need for performance. Going forward, new ma- ners — particularly small and medium enter- terials will be synthesised to carry multitudes prises (SMEs) — remained in their traditional of applications, ranging from construction to supporting roles, providing cost-effective ser- sensors, equipment, the environment and bi- vices using mostly labour (local or foreign) as otechnology. their principal resource. An example is plastic recycling technologies Our companies rarely have their own in- that will synthesise molecules, transforming tellectual property (IP) or products they have waste into new materials. Malaysia, especially designed on their own. Today, most of the in- in our research universities, has already intellectual and development content of MNCs vested fairly much in this area. So, it makes continues to be developed in their home coun- a lot of sense to start here. try or other developed countries, and gradually The second is micro-systems integration. Ma- in China (and to a lesser extent, Singapore). laysia is already reasonably good in this field,

Malaysia will need to respond to these threats but lacks in micro-sized integration, which is REUTERS

44 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 LAUREATO CHRONOGRAPH, 904L STEEL CASE, 42 MM

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SINCERE WATCH SDN BHD (212365 H) Suria KLCC Tel: (03) 2166 2181 www.sincere.com.sg the big trend for all sorts of applications across complex, less variable and more controlled. all industries, including the next generation For a start, we should pick those areas that of robotics. This is an area in which Malaysia we are already good at or have invested in. It can excel as it can leverage the excellent lo- makes no sense to abandon these in favour cal manufacturing automation competencies of the latest things. available. For example, I still remember that many years The third is in machine learning technolo- ago, Malaysia wanted to have a strong inte- gies. While Malaysia is still at the kindergarten grated circuit (IC) fabrication industry. At the stage in this field, it is a “must have” capability time, we had almost no competencies in this as all other technologies will converge on this field, on top of the fact that there were already particular starting point. Machine intelligence many big players competing on a crowded will be a key factor for competitive advantage. playing field. This starting point should be the next step The thinking at the time, as I understood it, towards enhancing the country’s gradually was to reach the apex of the semiconductor maturing software industry. value chain in one quantum leap. Today, after The fourth is that we should look at accelerat- all the effort, we still do not have a globally ing our contributions to the Manufacturing 4.0 competitive IC fabrication industry. revolution. This is a huge area in which Malaysia Indeed, if we had focused on integrated and can play a leadership role in transforming. analogue circuit design in a fabless environ- We are already reasonably competitive as a ment, we would have undoubtedly been more global manufacturer of electronic components successful in today’s patent-intensive envi- and it makes sense to leverage this to trans- ronment. This should have been the logical form our current factories into factories of the next step as we already had competencies in future right here in Malaysia. This will start the IC packaging and testing. This is only one of migration towards a leadership position as an the many examples that I can think of. enabler for the entire Industry 4.0 revolution. So, what should change relative to how we The follow-up question is, why do our local have traditionally been doing things? My ex- SMEs find it so hard to transform themselves? perience with our country’s Economic Trans- In my opinion, Malaysia places too much reli- formation Programme was that it was so wide ance on foreign technologies for our success ranging and there were so many agencies, and thus, local industries are gradually being consultants and people with a finger in it that Datuk Yoon Chon pushed further down the value chain. Local real change was very difficult. The bottom line Leong is a pioneer companies (private or government-linked) was that the strategy told a good story, but was of the Malaysian technology industry, should be incentivised to collaborate with SMEs way too complicated to execute. having been in to develop and implement solutions that can New initiatives should start tapping much the sector for 40 be scaled as future global products. more technically-savvy younger entrepreneurs years, dealing with My experience tells me that there is no quick and letting them have a bigger say, especially semiconductors fix to this challenge. We can buy outside tech- during the execution phase of the plan. These (LED and microwave devices). Post- nology just to showcase a quick fix or go the are the people who are close to the technologies retirement, he focuses hard way to show a “local fix”. and trends in a practical way. on start-ups in Many SMEs I speak to frequently say that Tap the older and more experienced people electronic hardware, the hardest markets to break into are the lo- to be mentors. Remove those who are in it for software, advanced cal customers who continue to think foreign the ride, those who are there to lobby and those materials and education. solutions are superior to local ones and, hence, who resist change. Refrain from forming huge easier to justify the purchase of. and multiple committees. Such local fixes come when initiatives and Focus on and fund industry-academia teams policies on education, infrastructure, business on industry-relevant R&D and share lessons and technology development are carefully learnt. At universities, separate researchers focused, planned and executed with a clear from teachers. Make sure our leaders — both objective to put Malaysia industrially at the political leaders and those in public service forefront again. — are much more accessible, better briefed From my years of working in the rapidly and readier to make decisions than was the changing tech industry and my advisory role case in the past. in the slower moving public sector, I find that In summary, let’s focus on leverage, exe- the strategies for turning big things around cution and agility in a fast-changing environ- are not that different. What is different is the ment and less on building grand strategies execution. For companies, challenges are less with hard-to-execute plans.

46 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 www.LOUISXIII-COGNAC.com

PLEASE SAVOUR RESPONSIBLY. “The economic engines of today must begin Cyberjaya’s to look beyond existing technologies and across all industries to remain relevant,” says Cyberview managing director Najib Ibrahim. changing tides For any tech city to prosper, Najib tells The Edge, a robust and well-developed ecosystem is needed as this allows tech players to simply plug in and enjoy the benefi ts of a complete and ever-expanding ore than two decades ago, if you With the government’s renewed focus on Cyber- infrastructure. were to drive 30-minutes towards jaya, Cyberview is now tasked with driving the next “Cyberview has invested in well-coordinated the south of Kuala Lumpur you phase of development for Cyberjaya in accordance eff orts to build and expand this ecosystem. What would arrive at oil palm plantations. to its original intent. As the nucleus of Multimedia we see today is an ecosystem built on collaborative Over time, this area has been Super Corridor (MSC), Cyberjaya plays a catalyctic innovation that has transformed Cyberjaya and its Mdeveloped into Cyberjaya — with fl ourishing role in driving forward the development of tech- communities into an innovation-based economic hotels, commercial buildings, offi ces and uni- nology and innovation in Malaysia. hub. We believe in a collaborative environment, versities — turning it into a full-fl edge township Cyberview is cognisant of the fact that the eco- leading to the best of solutions and practices,” with comprehensive infrastructure equipped with system being built here needs to be constantly Najib says. smart solutions. supported by new technology and content. More This includes providing the space and oppor- Behind the story was Cyberview Sdn Bhd, importantly, the applications of these technology tunities in which tech players of various maturity which was mandated by the government to drive must be present, supported and encouraged. But, levels can participate. the growth of a global technology hub to support technology alone is insuffi cient. “One of the many examples of how a local in- and drive economic prosperity in Cyberjaya. “A critical ‘state of mind’ open to embracing dustry is supported by Cyberjaya’s ecosystem is Cyberview fi rst began its journey as a landowner emerging technologies and the cultivation of a the animation sector. Some of the best-known back in 1996 but has now assumed the role of a culture of innovation and creation are equally animation brands such as BoboiBoy, Ejen Ali and tech hub enabler for the city. important. Didi & Friends were born in Cyberjaya and continue

Cyberjaya has turned into a full-fl edged township equipped with smart solutions “Second, Cyberjaya’s Smart City agenda needs to be further encouraged and strengthened. Work on improving smart city infrastructure is currently The economic engines on-going, as well as eff orts to produce smart city of today must begin to solutions for a more inclusive and empowered look beyond existing community. It is noteworthy that Cyberjaya and technologies and across Putrajaya will be the locations for a 5G testbed — with Cyberview among those working with the all industries to remain Ministry of Communications and Multimedia on its relevant 5G Taskforce,” Najib says. — Najib Ibrahim Apart from that, Cyberview says it will strengthen the innovation ecosystem in Cyberjaya, which will include talent development, cultivating adaptive regulations on new technologies with the aim of to thrive in other countries.” of emerging technologies such as artifi cial intel- lowering barriers towards commercialisation and Here, Cyberview provided the industry with an ligence (AI) and robotics into Cyberjaya. This will encouraging partnerships between government and innovation ecosystem, including infrastructure, be key in stimulating the trajectory required in the private agencies. talents, incentives and a close-knit community relevant tech fi elds. Cyberjaya must be the preferred To relieve the government from a heavy fi nancial that they can call home. investment location for technology, housing global burden, Najib says it is equally important to fi nd “However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. To tech giants that will in turn attract the best talent new synergistic ways to monetise opportunities position Cyberjaya as the nucleus for MSC, we will and startups into the city.” for innovation. focus on four key pillars. First, we need to attract Najib says this will not just spur innovation along “A more holistic approach to talent development more tech-based foreign direct investment (FDI) the economic value chain but it will translate into is being put in place, with early exposures to encour- to Cyberjaya. a creation of more high-skilled job opportunities age interest in the areas of robotics and coding, for “We will focus on attracting FDIs from the space and the critical transfer of technology. example, among younger talent, while industrial Cyberview’s Living Lab Accelerator aims to accelerate start-ups towards the go-to market chapter of their businesses training will be made available to prepare those LoRa-based application that measures air quality Malaysia to meet the Green Building Index certi- leaving tertiary education to be industry-ready.” index in Cyberjaya. It provides detailed and reliable fi cation standards of sustainability will be unveiled Finally, Najib says it is crucial to ensure liveliness real-time data on key environmental parameters in Cyberjaya by November 2020. in Cyberjaya. “Ultimately, vibrancy and liveability using PM2.5 sensors. With a contract value of RM475 million, the are priorities in any city that undergoes transfor- Cyberjaya is also playing its part as Malaysia 288-bed facility will be built based on environ- mation,” he says, adding that Cyberview is looking strives towards being a cashless society by 2020. mental sustainability and energy-effi cient design to improve Cyberjaya’s social off erings, from more Together with fi nancial technology services com- features, including optimal orientation and solar recreational spaces and parks to the provision of pany Fullrich and Affi n Bank Group, Cyberview has energy harvesting technology. space and opportunities to experience technology launched an e-wallet service called TaPay that is “The hospital is currently at 15.7% completion, in new, inventive and stimulating ways. aimed to be a community-driven application. slightly ahead of schedule,” says Najib. To turn Cyberjaya into a global technology hub, “This e-wallet service was refi ned based on Narrowing it down to ways of implementing Cyberview has identifi ed two crucial ways — to 100,000 suggestions and inputs from business a collaborative innovative ecosystem, Cyberview mould it as a Smart City and position it as a Living groups, residents, educational institutions and aims to transform the city into a sandbox for local Lab for smart city solutions. students in Cyberjaya,” says Najib. innovators, entrepreneurs and startups through These development pillars are designed to in- He says Cyberview is committed to strengthening its Living Lab initiatives that consist of four hybrid crease Cyberjaya’s operational effi ciency, improve Cyberjaya’s smart city off erings to go cashless, in collaborative programmes: Living Lab Talent, Living the quality of life for the people of the city and line with the government’s push to reduce physical Lab Accelerator, Living Lab Pilot and Living Lab contribute to growing the local economy. cash transactions. Enterprise. For instance, Cyberview worked together with “Boost is another partner that Cyberview is These initiatives are designed to enable inno- Yen Global Bhd’s unit Atilze Sdn Bhd to implement working with towards that goal. There have been vators to apply new technologies to Cyberjaya by long-range (LoRa) technology, where environmen- active on-the-ground engagements in the city to developing, testing and piloting projects in a city tal sensors were installed in Cyberjaya. fi rst raise awareness among the community on the environment. LoRa is a low-power, long- range wide area convenience, values and socio-economic benefi ts Najib says Cyberview will also be working with network (LPWAN) technology that is designed of using e-wallets. other tech hubs around the world. For instance, to meet the demands of Internet of Things (IoT) “However, more work needs to be done in ex- Cyberview has recently forged a partnership with applications and services by connecting devices panding the initiative to include various community Pivot City Innovation District in Geelong, Australia. such as sensors over a wide area. segments,” says Najib. “The talent pool from both Cyberjaya and Pivot Cyberview currently runs a pilot for Airsense, a Apart from that, the fi rst public hospital in City will greatly benefi t from this cross-border col- new jobs created. It targets to raise 10 startups each year. The startups chosen are working within the space of fi ntech, IoT and robotics,” says Najib. Just like any other type of business, commercialisation is the part where one fi nds out if a business is workable and viable. Living Lab Pilot & Enterprise acts as a pilot platform for companies of various maturity levels to test and validate proof of concepts and prototypes that are commercial-ready. “These programmes encourage startups to leverage the city as a testbed for their innovative ideas and solutions, further enhancing the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Cyberjaya,” says Najib. He says more than 20% of Cyberjaya’s total population is made up of early-tech adopters, which shows how receptive the community is to new ideas. Going forward, Najib says Cyberview will for- A briefi ng on the Integrated Common Platform implemented in Cyberjaya tify this initiative and its programmes to support innovation across the industry value chain with an offi cial launch of Cyberview 16, a Smart Retail Entrepreneur Centre, in the fi rst quarter. “This upcoming Cyberview project will be a place of convergence for entrepreneurs and startups alike, where they can bring forward their ideas and products to the commercialisation phase.” Najib says these retail outlets and co-working spaces will be a buzzing venue for entrepreneurs to meet, connect and create. “Cyberview targets to produce over 100 startups, create 500 new jobs and train up to 1,200 entrepreneurs in the next fi ve years.” Cyberview’s wholly-owned subsidiary Futurise Centre recently had a soft launch where a line- up of partners and programmes were introduced. Futurise essentially works on future innovation Exploring cardless parking access by Touchless in Cyberjaya and future-proofi ng goals across industries in the development of futuristic innovation ecosystems. laboration. This will unlock abundant opportunities “Here, startups will take part in a vigorous fi ve- “Futurise is working on future innovation, par- for the communities of both hubs,” Najib says. month process of mentorship, consultancy and advi- ticularly on IR4.0 ,” Najib explains. “Under its living lab talent initiative, Cyberview sory before demonstrating their ideas and business Through its four main products Ideas, works with universities to grow the supply and de- models to investors, corporates, community builders Nucleus, Labs and Ventures, Futurise aspires velop quality talents. Through programmes such and media partners,” Najib explains. to provide industry players with a collaborative as the Young Innovators Challenge and Innovate Successful startups at Cyberjaya, from the innovation platform to help tackle new business Malaysia, we encourage young minds to generate previous cohort, include The Lorry.com and a challenges and tap emerging opportunities. Among creative and innovative solutions for specifi c prob- currency exchange platform MoneyMatch. The the tech focus areas are robotics, AI and auton- lem statements observed from business and other Lorry.com expanded its app business to Thailand omous vehicles. industries,” says Najib. and Indonesia in just four years and it has raised With two projects — Futurise Centre and Cy- This year, Cyberview will be working with uni- funds worth RM6.6 million in the Series A round. berview 16 — coming online by the fi rst quarter of versity students from 12 universities for real-life In 2017, its founders Nadhir Ashafi q and Chee this year, Cyberjaya will defi nitely serve to nurture solutions to improve urban socioeconomic chal- Hau Goh made it to the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia more entrepreneurs in the years to come. lenges within the smart city context. list for the Industry, Manufacturing and Energy Through all these models, Najib says tech com- As for its Living Lab Accelerator (CLLA) initiative, category. munity and industry leaders will be able to work on Cyberview is focusing on accelerating startups with “To date, the CLLA has nurtured over 65 startups viable and pragmatic solutions for their businesses minimum viable resources towards the go-to-mar- with more than RM30 million in investments raised, with the support of a reliable and capable enabler ket chapter of their businesses. RM45 million in revenue generated and over 300 like Cyberview. 52 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 WE CAN MAKE THINGS HAPPEN Good leaders may come and go but good institutions will remain. BY YEO BEE YIN

TURNING POINT have always had a strong desire to make I an impact, drive change in people’s lives Yeo Bee Yin was and make the world I know a better place to appointed the live in, but becoming a minister in Malaysia youngest-ever was never part of my plan. Not even in my woman minister in wildest dreams. Malaysia in 2018 I had chosen politics to be the vehicle for my ideals — responsible governance, sustainable economic growth, good education for all, as well as women and youth empowerment. I chose to join the then opposition party because I wanted to be on the right side of history and speak for what is right and just. When Malaysians cast their ballots on May 9, 2018, we saw history unfold as the nation chose a change of government for the first time in 61 years. Shortly after that, to everyone’s surprise — myself included — I was appointed a minister. So here I am, the youngest ever woman minister in the country, at the helm of a ministry with the longest ever name — the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC). Luckily, I have a good team supporting me, despite all my weaknesses. MESTECC has three pillars — energy, science and technology, and environment and climate change. On the energy front, we want to introduce a greater proportion of renewable

MOHD IZWAN MOHD NAZAM/THE EDGE MOHD IZWAN energy in electricity generation, increase en-

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 53 ergy efficiency and improve market structure stakeholders are wide-ranging and the deci- in the power sector. sion-making process can be long and tedious, On the science and technology front, we not to mention the mountains of documents want to create wealth through the adoption to pore over for reviews as well as the heavy and commercialisation of science and tech- bureaucracy waiting for streamlining and re- nology in the economy and create a culture of structuring. More often than not, time feels like innovation among the next generation. the enemy. There is just so much to be done! As for environment and climate change, we In fact, my team and I have listed more than want to ensure that we leave the country a better 60 initiatives, each of which requires good plan- place for the next generation compare to what ning and execution. This is to ensure that what we have inherited. We also want to prepare the we want to achieve under the three pillars of country to face the challenges of climate change. MESTECC can be attained. Indeed, I am ambitious and impatient in lead- Can we execute the initiatives? We can. ing this ministry. I want to get many things For far too long, we have been told about our done in the shortest time possible. Why? Be- limitations. It is high time we start looking at cause the world is changing fast and Malaysia our potential for making things happen. There has been “hibernating” for more than a decade. should not be any more excuses or delays. We need to catch up and get things done Since my appointment to MESTECC, we have quickly and excellently. I strongly believe that reviewed the Net Energy Metering and solar the position I hold today is not for me to enjoy leasing policies to ensure higher uptake of the vanity of becoming a minister, of being rooftop solar, revoked non-performing feed-in someone important, but is really a platform tariff projects and introduced new renewable for me to play a part in ensuring that Malaysia energy quota for small hydro, biomass and bi- will once again be an Asian tiger that roars ogas; pursued energy performance contracts to and put us on the world map for good reasons, spearhead energy-efficiency efforts; developed thereby making every Malaysian proud to call and announced a road map of zero single-use this country our motherland. plastics by 2030; cancelled the contracts of four An anti-Lynas Having been a minister for slightly more independent power producers to optimise re- demonstration in than four months, I am fully aware that the serve margins and minimise electricity system Kuantan, Pahang AFP

54 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 Yeo Bee Yin is Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change. She graduated from University Technology Petronas with first- class honours in chemical engineering and the University of Cambridge with a master’s degree in advanced chemical engineering (with commendation), where she was a recipient of the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She is the author of Reimagining Malaysia, which captures her insights as a young lawmaker on nation-building — institutional reform, education, youth, women, sustainable development and the weaker members of society — and what the country can achieve in the future.

cost; and reviewed and announced new con- its impact to last longer than one’s minister- trols for Lynas’ radioactive waste management. ship, I need to build a legacy by establishing There are people who ask me, “Bee Yin, why ecosystems with four elements — the right are you so aggressive?” My answer is always governing policies, technologies and tools, this, “We have no time to waste.” This is also talents and the right business models, which why I decided to introduce this tagline for MES- attract private financing (instead of relying on TECC in 2019: ‘Getting things done. Making the government’s budget). With all these in things happen.’ place, the initiatives will grow and flourish There is another thing I have been thinking even with the change of leaders. about. What will happen to these efforts when I am looking to prepare MESTECC and these I am no longer the minister of MESTECC. Let’s portfolios beyond my term as a minister as I face it, in a democracy and in politics, one am always reminded of what I have written in cannot assume that one will be in a position my book, “Good leaders come and go, or they of power forever. I always ask myself, “What will change. Only good institutions remain.” if it is only one term, or even less than that?” As we step into 2019, my calendar is filled The answer I get is to never make these in- and I am fixed on building a legacy that will

KENNY YAP/THE EDGE KENNY YAP/THE itiatives my pet projects. For an initiative and last beyond my time in office.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 55 56 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 MOVING MALAYSIA FORWARD The younger generation voted for change and it is they who must take the country forward. BY TAN SRI RAFIDAH AZIZ

n May 9, 2018, voters in Malaysia went TURNING change, for the better. To put right what has Oto the polls in the 14th general election. POINT gone wrong. To rebuild what has been bro- The majority of them inked their index fingers ken. And, of course, to fulfil their hopes and with a single objective — to vote and change Malaysia’s aspirations. the government. decade-long slide Some people say it is a New Malaysia. Oth- They wanted to install the newly minted Pa- into ignominy ers talk of a new dawn. I prefer to talk about katan Harapan coalition as the new government forced the change Malaysia, Moving Forward. to replace the one that had clearly brought in government After all, it is the SAME BLESSED MALAY- issues and problems to the nation and the SIA. It is the government — and hopefully, the people. The problems, which had tarnished governance — that has changed. Certainly, the Malaysia’s image, constrained the economy people’s expectations are high. and caused much concern to most Malaysians. There is a new generation of Malaysians, with Looking back 61 years earlier, on Aug 31, new expectations and aspirations that are in line 1957, the people of the then Federation of with those of their peers globally. These young Malaya woke up to a new dawn in their new- Malaysians are more participative politically and ly independent nation — a nation free from are more aware of developments elsewhere. colonial rule and responsible for charting the Some may lack the experience, but information way forward. and communications technology has given them The euphoria felt across the nation was access to information on those developments. palpable. I felt it as a 14-year-old school girl. They are the internet generation, being IT-savvy I heard over the radio our nation’s Father of and having cross-border connectivity. Independence, Tunku Abdul Rahman, shouting In the recent past, the younger generation in “MERDEKA!” seven times. I felt that rapturous some countries triggered and drove changes echo from the crowd at Stadium Merdeka. In in government and reforms in policies. The the evening, my family went to celebrate at young, such as those in the Middle East, helped the pesta (festival) in the Lake Gardens. A new trigger people’s movements (such as the Arab nation was born. Spring, which sadly has dragged on to turn Eventually, in 1969, the Alliance /Perikatan into harsh long winters). government evolved into the larger Barisan Still, the younger generation continues to Nasional, which would govern for 61 years. prevail. Thus, in Malaysia, the expectations of The first half century saw Malaysia progress in this generation will continue to drive and even its development, taking its place in the world dictate public policies and initiatives. community of nations, with people-centric gov- Today, the young are the epitome of the real ernance. There was awareness of the various Malaysians, where race, religion and gender transformations on the regional and global are not contentious issues for them. They better stage. Malaysia was regarded as one of the understand the need to compete, to strive for world’s economic tigers. excellence and to think beyond the domestic Then, the last decade witnessed a slide parameters. They do not, in the main, carry downwards. The narrative is now known to all, any excess baggage of parochialism and xen- although some may still be in a state of denial. ophobia. But when such negativism is injected Regardless, the vast majority of the people into the environment in which they learn and exercised their democratic right to vote in the work, they will surely absorb some measure of new Pakatan Harapan government. Pakatan those very divisive traits and attitudes. Harapan literally means Coalition of Hope. For the young, their future began on May 9,

FOTOBERNAMA The people have registered their hope for 2018, that day of voting for change.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 57 which have a pervasive impactonsocieties which haveapervasive those catalysedbythebroadspectrumofICT, The fast-pacedexternaldevelopments,suchas laysians, regardlessofrace,religionorgender. the upliftmentofeconomiclifeallMa- rigeur the economy. and relevantareasofICTdevelopmentsinto 4.0,andincorporatingthelatestor Industry omy intotheFourth Industrial Revolution, knowledge andskills,integrationoftheecon- such astheacquisitionandupgradingof developments. abreast andadapttotheregionalorglobal over thelongterm,duetoinabilitykeep so thatthenationwillnotbemarginalised chronisation withtheexternaldevelopments some ofthosedevelopments. opments, aswelltobenefitoptimallyfrom that ariseoutofexternallygenerateddevel- cies tosuccessfullyovercomethechallenges make radicalshiftsinrelevanteconomicpoli- addressed. Somewillrequiregovernmentsto transformation thatneedtoberecognisedand globally, therewillcontinuetobechangeand FUTURE-PROOF. of globalchangeandtransformation,mustbe 58 Politics ofnationaldevelopmentmustbe Key adjustmentsincludethoseinareas Domestic policymeasuresmayneedsyn- In theever-changing operatingenvironment Certainly nationalgovernance,inthisera Whither nationalgovernance?

, wherebypoliticalprocessesresultin

UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS de place intheworldcommunityofnations. ward alongtherightpathtotakeitsrightful wrongs. ThatalonecanpropelMalaysiafor- especially thedosanddon’ts, therightsand and resilience. making unitythesourceofnationalstrength It isabouttrulyforging unityindiversityand overarching commonaspirationsandgoals. the stakeholdersofMalaysia.Itisabout strong senseofunityandcohesivenessamong principles andvalues,commitmenta out strong,ifnotstronger. having economicandsocialresiliencetocome effects ofanyfutureeconomiccontagion,and phenomena, suchaseconomicheadwindsand nal economicenvironment,abletoovercome tandem withthedevelopmentsinexter- Malaysia continuestodevelopsuccessfullyin developed-nation status. past. Itisnotmerelyaboutworkingtowards and heldbackbyanyexcessbaggageofthe processes andproductionvaluechains. to interfacewiththecuttingedgeICT-driven quately equippedwiththeskillsandknowledge the publicandprivatesectorsmustbeade- to humanresourcesdevelopment. to, andevenoverhaul of, policiespertaining and nationsatlarge, requireseriousrevisions The pasthasmuchtoteachMalaysians, National governanceisaboutthemindsets, More importantly, itisaboutmakingsurethat cannotaffordtobeconstrained The country The youngentrantstotheworkforceinboth held from1987to2008. industry, whichshe international tradeand post wasministerof ministries. Herlast and publicenterprises posts inthefinance 1976 to2008,sheheld government from the BarisanNasional When shewasin from 1978to2013. womanMP,serving longest- the country’s approach, Rafidah was for herno-nonsense Known astheIronLady Malaysia Studios. and PinewoodIskandar chairman ofAirAsiaX independent director/ currently non-executive Tan SriRafidah Azizis

REUTERS

UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

FOTOBERNAMA POST-MAY 9, MALAYSIANS DESERVE AN EFFECTIVE OPPOSITION Parliament must lead the way through reforms, while Umno must become a progressive, centrist movement. BY KHAIRY JAMALUDDIN

write this during interesting and tumultu- TURNING certainly not be leading it into the next election. I ous times in Malaysian politics. After the POINT It will lose its biggest leverage without him. conclusion of the last session of this year’s So, it needs to strengthen itself while he is parliament, political alliances have been quick Party-hopping has still around and can command the deference to shift. To use a sporting analogy, we are now started in earnest of the other PH parties. in the off-season transfer market with players The other reason PPBM cannot wait is a looking for new teams. broader point. How parliament will look when it opens again There is great unrest on the Malay political in March will be anybody’s guess. Will PKR ground. Some people may say this is imagined be the biggest party in the Pakatan Harapan or manufactured. Even if these fears and con- coalition? Or will PPBM find itself as the senior cerns are irrational or have been exploited by numerical partner, bolstered by Umno defec- certain parties, Malay discontent is real. The tors? If there is no Umno left to speak of, will government’s disastrous handling of the ICERD PAS then be the principal opposition party? issue, which led to the massive rally on Dec All of these questions will be answered in the 8, was a manifestation of Malay discontent. months, if not weeks, ahead. And when identity politics collides with an This political musical chairs that we are wit- economic environment that has, for the lay nessing should not come as a surprise. There person, not improved, there is trouble on the were two principal reasons why the immediate horizon. political configuration of parties post May 9 The government’s narrative that the mount- would not hold. ing national debt that was inherited has pre- The first involves Umno. Umno and its lead- vented the fulfilment of electoral promises has ers have never been in federal opposition. We increasingly been met with cynicism. have governed Malaysia since Merdeka and This backdrop has necessitated a strategic never had to slog it out without power, posi- move on the part of Mahathir to try and allay tion and patronage. We were the Persian cats the Malay discontent. Since Malays understand of Malaysian politics. Now, the Persian cats and value political power, the most expedient find themselves out on the streets. Most of way of doing this would be to increase the these Persian cats are not street fighters and number of Malay MPs in the PH government, cannot survive like a street cat. So, they will specifically Malay MPs with the same DNA as take the first opportunity to sneak back into PPBM. That would be Umno MPs. the mansion. Where do we go from here? Second, PPBM is the smallest party in the I think we should get the defections over Pakatan Harapan government. The only way of and done with as quickly as possible. Who- strengthening itself without having to wait for ever wants to leave should go. Once that’s the next general election would be via defec- done, everyone needs to move on and focus tions. Why can’t it wait for the next election? on building this much-lauded Malaysia Baru. Because Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad will most The blame game and witch-hunts should end.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 61 Pampered Persians not fit for life on the streets

If anyone is suspected of corruption or abuse out for us. We not only have to canvass public of power, by all means investigate them thor- ideas for next year’s budget but also monitor Khairy Jamaluddin is oughly. But not all our present malaise can the implementation of this year’s budget. MP for Rembau, former be pinned on the past. Both sides must work There is much work to do and the sooner Umno Youth chief and former minister of hard to push through lasting reforms. This is we get down to doing it without pointing fin- youth and sports. important because it creates a level playing gers and making back room political deals, field for everyone. the better for Malaysia. Let me give you an example how reforms Let me end by saying this. I don’t want to judge can prevent defections after each election. those who have decided to switch teams during One of the principal reasons cited by defectors this off-season transfer window. Many are my is that once they are in the opposition, they friends and they have their reasons for doing so. are denied access to development funds that But I personally believe there must be some could be used to assist their constituents. If value to the people’s will. And on May 9, the we push through reforms so that every elected people willed for a PH government. That means representative, regardless of the party, is given those who lost must respect this by becoming the same development allocation, this will no a credible opposition. longer be a problem. If the last election has told us anything, it That is how reforms can level the playing is that Malaysians want to see a competitive, field and prevent the excuse of lack of develop- two-party block system that will keep both ment funds from being used to justify defecting. sides on their toes. If losers simply join the Parliament must lead the way in pushing for winning team after the election, why have an these reforms. Recognition must be given to election in the first place? the shadow cabinet in terms of resources and As far as Umno is concerned, I will do my best standing. A dedicated day should be set aside to reform my party into the centrist, progressive for the opposition to set the order of business movement it once was. I want to move Umno so motions and private member’s bills can be away from the ethno-religious embrace of PAS. tabled and debated. I want to recruit young, professional members Government bills and appointments should who can raise the level of political discourse. be thoroughly scrutinised by select committees. This will be difficult because good leaders One of the positive achievements this year has have left. What is left may not be as good. But been the creation of six select committees. I I am committed to trying and if I fail to reform was fortunate to be chosen to sit in the com- Umno it would not be because I didn’t try. mittee on the budget. And if Umno cannot be reformed, there These committees will have to demonstrate must be a possibility of another platform. Not bipartisan cooperation in fulfillingtheir duties a platform to jump into PH, but an effective to check against the executive. For the commit- platform to give Malaysians the opposition

tee on the budget, we will have our work cut they deserve. REUTERS

62 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

AFTER THE RESET, WHAT’S NEXT?

Change can be led by cities BY HAMDAN ABDUL MAJEED

ay 9, 2018 — unlike May 13, 1969 — TURNING for change. Only this time, we changed the Mhas enabled Malaysians to reclaim their POINT government. Some have been hungry for that voice. Malaysians have traditionally demon- change since they first tasted it in 2008. Some strated a lot of trust in their elected government. Malaysians want felt that change was needed with the future As Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to see less rhetoric in mind. A third group took a gamble to see said, “We do not like to change our govern- and more tangible what the new government could do to improve ment.” results on the living conditions. A sizeable number of people This political stability allowed Malaysia to ground opted for the status quo. achieve a level of material progress that is the We get a glimpse of what unites all Malay- envy of many post-colonial nations. Thus, it sians in our cities. In our work with city govern- was a great jolt to the governing class when a ments and communities throughout Peninsular decade ago, despite the remarkable increase Malaysia, one thing is clear — most Malaysians in wages, rise of the middle class and near opted for change because we wanted to see the eradication of poverty, their hold on power establishment of good governance, less rhet- began to loosen. oric and more tangible results on the ground. This erosion of mass support can be traced While cities are the engines of economic to many factors, but one clear causal link is growth, they are also places where the health urbanisation. Since 2008, Barisan Nasional’s of the national economy becomes obvious. share of the popular vote had declined from Homelessness, under-employment, crime, 50.27% to 47.38% (2013) to 33.96% (2018). Most drug addiction, vandalism and vagrancy are of the votes it lost were in the urban and peri-ur- all indicators of an economic system that needs ban areas. fixing. While urban voters have traditionally had a At the same time, jobs and material devel- soft spot for the opposition, it is no longer true opment — the twin engines of happiness in that this sentiment is limited to urban areas. the 1990s — no longer meet the aspirations The internet and social media have made ur- of a new generation of Malaysians. What they ban issues national ones. More importantly, want is greater participation in shaping urban they have chipped away at ethnic or religious realities. affiliations. This is the real political tsunami Top-down approaches without consultation that is making party politics more volatile and and Nimby-centric (Not in my backyard) op- unpredictable. positions have to make way for a more inclu- At the heart of this sea change is an increas- sive partnership in development. In short, we ingly demanding and discerning citizenry. Even need to work together to build the Malaysia political parties whose victories in the last gen- of the future, which is inclusive, sustainable eral election seemed invincible should take and vibrant. heed of the civil movements that can remove In all our projects involving the public realm, them from their perch. Just ask French President we work closely with local communities — bot- Emmanuel Macron, who is facing a sponta- tom-up, rather than top-down. This has prov- neous citizen-driven uprising of yellow-vest- en most effective in George Town, where we ed protesters. He quickly apologised and is started operations in 2009. reversing some of his more radical policies. And now, the same inclusive approach has Back home, like in France, Malaysians voted resulted in 600 projects in Butterworth, Kuala

64 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 HARIS HASSAN/THE EDGE UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

65 Lumpur and Johor Baru. In all these projects, sizeable doses, keeps us honest. In urban areas, we work closely with our local governmental our stakeholders help us ensure transparency partners and we are hopeful that in the years and accountability. The result is that we work to come, this approach will lead to more inclu- hard to achieve consensus and inclusiveness, sive, safe, equitable and liveable city spaces. making our projects more effective and sus- Think City’s work over the past few years is tainable in the longer term. premised on engaging multiple stakeholders to create synergy and momentum to revive BEING CONSENSUS-ORIENTED the flagging fortunes of declining areas within Good governance requires mediation of the George Town, and the approaches there have different or competing interests of society so been replicated in Butterworth, Kuala Lumpur that the final result is something that is in the and Johor Baru. best interests of the whole community. This also requires one to take a long-term view. NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS If we want sustainable development, we I understand that many people have expressed need a new economic system, one that is more their desire to see things done differently. But circular and equitable. A good place to start is the only way to ensure that there is good gov- the United Nations’ Sustainable Development ernance is to keep vigilant at all times. Goals (SDGs). Working towards these goals Governance — be it corporate, national or requires a deep understanding of the histori- local — refers to the process of decision-making cal, cultural and social contexts of Malaysia’s Think City is involved as well as the processes by which decisions diverse communities and values. in a variety of projects, are executed. I always tell my team that we are Think City is a strong advocate of the SDGs including The River of “protecting” the public interest if we understand and New Urban Agenda, which was adopted at Life project, which will and follow processes. It is not a straitjacket, the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable see the rejuvenation of but a responsible way to ensure accountability Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecua- eight rivers in Greater Kuala Lumpur so that and effectiveness. dor, in October 2016. The New Urban Agenda they are clean enough We need not fear scrutiny, instead we should represents a shared vision for a more sustain- for water sports and welcome it. Constructive criticism, given in Continues on page 70 recreation HARIS HASSAN/THE EDGE

66 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

From page 66 rejecting cheaper conventional ways of res- Think City is carrying able future and posits that well-planned and toration that would destroy building façades out urban regeneration well-managed urbanisation can be a powerful from an aesthetic viewpoint. projects in the older, more historical parts of tool for sustainable development. We are replicating these efforts in Butter- Kuala Lumpur worth, Kuala Lumpur and Johor Baru in a bid INCLUSIVENESS AND to similarly galvanise local community folks ORDERLY PARTICIPATION to undertake urban regeneration. Representative democracy does not, in itself, We must persevere as we usher our cities guarantee that the voice of the marginalised to positions where they are efficient engines and most vulnerable in society will always be of growth for the new Malaysia. Beyond the heard. Participants in any democracy need to hard economic numbers, we must take care of be informed. And in this era, freedom of asso- the softer aspects of city making, such as cre- ciation and expression must go hand in hand ating buzz and vibrancy and ensuring growth with an organised civil society. It almost goes and development delivers social dividends. without saying that participation from a wide Thankfully, these do not always require big- spectrum of stakeholders is a key requirement budget activities. Hamdan Abdul of good governance. When people sense the Change is not a one-time, one-off event. We Majeed is the presence of inclusiveness, then things are must continue to push the boundaries, make managing director of urban regeneration much more likely to move forward in a con- bold choices and not forget the importance of organisation Think City structive manner. doing the small things, the right way, every As mentioned above, this was the approach single day. that Think City took in its work over the past We need to embrace one another to face the few years to revive the flagging fortunes of challenges of how technology, social behaviour declining areas within George Town. Today, and jobs of the future will reshape our nation the people there are actively involved in mak- and cities. For the country to progress, there is ing their city better in various ways. Heritage a need for a new compact between citizen and building owners need no persuasion to restore state to shape the new Malaysia. We need to their properties back to their former glory, by celebrate all voices in making a better country.

embracing costlier conservation methods while Let’s Think Malaysia. HARIS HASSAN/THE EDGE

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72 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 ore Malaysians are fighting to Mbe brave and taking things into their own hands. It is a time of change THE COMEBACK and the tiger is ready to leap forward. Being brave is not only something we see OF A POWER visually as victorious or untouchable. After being at the top of my game for many years, HOUSE I was considered an example of power and determination. But as I look back, my biggest The way forward has more to do with turning point was not in my triumphs but when good sportsmanship than unbridled I did not have any. I believe we must reach low points to strive for change and Malaysia is a competition. BY DATUK NICOL DAVID living example of this. The times when I lost matches were always painfully difficult to take, but losing my World No 1 ranking hit me the hardest. At that mo- TURNING ment, I felt that nothing seemed to work to POINT get me out of that hole. But what it really did was bring me back to life by finding a new Losing the No 1 perspective in me to grow stronger than ever. ranking in squash I could not repeat the things that had worked after being the before, but had to reinvent myself. These longest-reigning breakthrough moments are what we need to world champion rekindle our fire that will brighten our future. As the world is evolving, so is our country. People want change and it starts by nurturing belief, which makes all the difference. But how do we nurture belief? I want to share the three key behaviours by which I live to make success translate into a magnitude of difference to be the best. Why do we constantly sabotage ourselves? I believe in optimism rather than pessimism. I live by this simple belief and nothing fazes me. I just think everything is possible. The level of optimism I have for everything is on another planet! That is the reason I sometimes find it strange that the majority of people still tend to see more negativity than goodness. A lot of us underestimate the power of optimism. There can always be something positive if we care to make the effort to find it. Many people ask me how I maintained a strong mind when I was the World No 1 for nine years. It was simple. I kept trusting my abilities and feeding myself positive messages. Instead of listening to negative comments or comparing myself to others, I believed I had the biggest gift to take me through any situation. There will always be a positive and negative side to everything, but it is more important than ever to start bringing optimism into our daily lives through positive dialogue, by surrounding yourself with people who dream and wish for the better and moving away from things or people that take away the positive in you.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 73 Why is it so hard to build together? I feel that the more open we are to working together, the better the outcome for everyone. In the world we live in today, being competitive is necessary. But it is more important to learn not to feel threatened by other great talents or competition. When I was growing up, I had to look up to my sisters. Lianne, the eldest, was an all- round skilled athlete while Cheryl, the middle sister, was a pure squash talent. I was fast, but everything else was not natural for me. Instead of comparing myself to them and being frus- trated at the things I did not naturally have, I trained with my sisters to pick up their strong points. As we worked together, our bond grew stronger than ever and we benefited overall. In today’s demanding world, I hear from my friends that there is so much competition at work, long hours, difficult work environments and sometimes stressful routines as everyone is looking for ways to gain recognition. It may feel like anyone could be a threat to growth in the workplace. That is why inclusiveness is key to shaping the future and benefiting everyone. It is difficult to learn to be open to other talents, yet I believe the more we let them in, the more all-rounded we are going to be. Now more than ever, it is David celebrating with important to be open to new ways of thinking, her trophy after winning creativity and styles that build together rather the final squash match than destroy. against England's Jenny Why does everyone look for shortcuts to Duncalf during the success? World Open at the Luxor Theater in Rotterdam, I hate to say it, but it is true — hard work IS the Netherlands, on without shortcuts. There are no two ways about Nov 6, 2011 it. Nothing is going to magically happen without the willingness to work for what you want. There may be those who do find shortcuts but Some days were harder than others during somehow, it comes with consequences that may training. Mentally, it pushed me because if I not be acceptable in the long run. It is when every could get through the tough sessions, I would bit of time and effort is put into building yourself be ready for the tests in competition and over- from the bottom up and working hard for it that come them when it matters most. Only when I you get the pure satisfaction of accomplishment. practised going through these hard and brutal There is a sense that you truly earn what is situations, could I anticipate the mental strength there after putting your heart and soul into it. it would take when they presented themselves. Becoming World No 1 was not easy. I had to start The moment I understood my place, as by leaving my own country to get the proper World Champion and World No 1, was when training abroad. It was way out of my comfort I won my second world title. I had the chal- zone — living alone and training six days a lenge to prove one more time that I had week, for almost 20 hours each week for three what it took to regain the title. It was not giv- years until I reached the turning point of my en to me. I had to defend it to earn it back. career. A hardworking mentality can be adopted by I told myself that if I worked twice as hard everyone, with the will to be disciplined by as my opponents, continued to refine my skills working harder than ever to reach your goals with a lot of practice, I would remain the best and to be the best version of yourself. Push your

in the world. limits, be brave, be bold and never let anything AFP

74 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 or anyone stop you from breaking those barriers. my accomplishments and used my experience There will always be failures along the way, to take over. Only when I could accept the fact Datuk Nicol David is but do not stop because of let-downs. The that I was struggling did I grow up as a person. the longest reigning process of working hard does not necessar- It does not matter what you do in life. The world squash champion, winning the ily assure you immediate success. It takes way we mould ourselves as individuals is World Open title eight time and patience, and plenty of painful mo- how we would like to see our nation grow. times. She has been ments, both physically and emotionally. I was If these simple factors are not implemented, active in promoting never discouraged when these happened to then we will remain stuck in our ways and sport as a vehicle to me because they were bound to happen. No may not take the steps that we need to. We empower children and serves as ambassador one is perfect and I learnt that the hard way. have had our struggles, but this generation is for StreetSquash New My lowest point was not being World No 1 going to push forward for a better Malaysia. York, a programme anymore. I did not realise just how much Our country is built on each individual play- of the National Urban I struggled when I lost that position. I was ing a part in society, which is full of possi- Squash and Education literally banging my head against the wall bilities. Each person has a role to move the Association in the US, which empowers and thinking, “What was happening to me?” entire nation in the right way. It can be as children to reach their The more I tried to force it, the more I lost it. simple as the way I have approached my life goals. Through reflection, I discovered that I was not for years and it will make waves for our future. fully appreciating me and started to be kinder Malaysia is a power house and we will rise like to myself. It also gave me perspective on all a roaring tiger ready to fight for our nation.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 75 THE UBERISATION OF HEALTHCARE IN MALAYSIA Technology and innovation will bring medical care right to your doorstep. BY DATUK DR NOOR HISHAM ABDULLAH (AS TOLD TO JENNIFER JACOBS)

ot too long from now, citizens will be TURNING homes, rather than requiring them to crowd Nable to book a house call from a doctor, POINT into hospitals for tests, treatment and care. the way they hail a ride. And these doctors will After all, which is the best bed? It is not the be able to attend to a wide range of services Bringing medical hospital bed, but your own at home. Which is — from immunisation to simple operations to care to the the best food? It is not hospital food, but the chemotherapy. community food you get at home. My vision for healthcare in Malaysia starts In the old days, doctors used to visit their with the patient. We need to empower the patients at home. We are just reviving that patient and from that one objective, we have concept, and adding a layer of digital health so developed an entire framework. Instead of that the doctors are more accurate and precise patients having to come to clinics and hos- in their diagnosis and treatment. pitals, we want the doctor to go to the home They can do a lot of investigation using and provide not just basic care, but even some gadgets that enable them to measure precise things that you think can only be done in the heart rates, do mobile ultrasounds and even hospital now. diagnose skin conditions by taking a picture on Technology will enable this. There have been their phone and using artificial intelligence (AI). many innovations in the past few years, but And when you need medicine, the doctors we need to create a system where all this in- can do an e-prescription and the pharmacist novation can be brought together in a coher- can do e-dispensing so that the medicine will ent manner to benefit the patients, whatever arrive at your house in three to four hours. economic strata they come from. We have already done this at the Putrajaya Domiciliary care, or a doctor visiting the pa- Hospital. You do not come to the hospital to tient at home, is not a new concept. We already collect your medicine. You call and the phar- have various versions of it. For instance, we macist prepares the medicine and couriers it to send nurses to visit mothers and their new- you — you just pay RM6 for the convenience. borns at home to provide post-natal care. And For RM6, you do not need to come to the hos- we have also opened up homecare to stroke pital or pay for petrol, parking and tolls. Who patients: doctors go to their homes to follow wouldn’t be willing to do that? up with them and see how they are doing. And now we are looking at taking this further. And you may have heard of an app called Can we do wound-dressing at home? What Doctor2U, which aims to create an entire health- about immunisation or even chemotherapy? care ecosystem built into a single app. Its core Why should you go to the hospital to have feature is a doctor house call service that brings blood tests? I can send a medical assistant a doctor to a customer’s door within 60 minutes. and a nurse to your home to take your blood In future, I think, patients will first go to and you pay a fee for it, say, RM10. the internet or social media to check up on So far, we have been doing this for VVIPs. their condition and only go to the doctor for a Now, we want to extend it to the community second opinion to confirm their diagnosis. In at large. And because of technological inno- fact, today, home tests are available for dengue, vations, we will be able to. HIV, Hepatitis C and even typhoid. We would like to start a service similar to We are taking healthcare back to the commu- Doctor2U where we have a list of doctors reg- nity. We will send doctors to the patients in their istered with us who can answer bookings and

76 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 77 take house calls. We do not give them a salary. this fully and if it is a middle-class patient, we Muslim boys awaiting Instead, they earn based on the number of can subsidise it partially). If the doctor makes circumcision at the calls they take, just like Uber or Grab drivers. RM100 to RM200 for each home visit and they National Mosque If they want to earn more, they just need to go to 10 homes a day, they could make up to work harder. RM2,000 a day, which works out to RM60,000 By doing it this way, I do not need to provide a month. That is more than what I earn! a driver and car, and I do not have to pay for So the question is, would you pay RM100 the car maintenance and petrol to send the for a doctor to come and treat you at home? doctor to the home. Right now, we (the Health That is the concept we want. Of course, we Ministry) have to provide all that. But if you will standardise everything. So the doctors who uberise the service, the doctor pays for all this want to be part of this service will register with him or herself. us and receive training just like they would if And they won’t lose out. If they are willing to they were an Uber or Grab driver. work hard and see a certain number of patients And the patients will rate them after a service. a day, they can earn good money. Say you pay If they like the doctor, they can give him or her them RM100 to RM200 for a house call. (If it is five stars and then each time they call, they

a poor patient, the government can subsidise can get the same doctor. In this way, they can REUTERS

78 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 The next question is, can we do surgery at home? And my answer is, why not? We have been doing surgery in the community for years. After all, what is ritual circumcision, if not a type of surgery? I recently returned from Malaysia’s field hospital in Cox Bazar, Bangladesh, which caters for the needs of Rohingya refugees. The field hospital is in the jungle and we do not even have access to clean water. But we do have innovations to overcome these challenges. So, if we can do operations in the middle of the jungle, why can’t we do them in our homes? We want to enhance the quality of care. So Datuk Dr Noor Hisham we need to look into smart innovations, cre- is director-general of ating the tools that we can package together the Health Ministry in screening, in treatment, basically, in the provision of good quality services at the community level. We want to integrate things like wearables, that is the watches that measure your blood pressure and pulse rate, and even do an ECG, throughout the day. To make this happen, we at the Ministry of Health are working with the Malaysian Commu- nications and Multimedia Commission and we have formed four special interest groups (SIGs). The first SIG is a sandbox that looks at existing regulations to see what needs to be improved or amended to develop some of these ideas that I have shared. The second SIG looks at digital health, creative ideas and innovation. If a doctor has an idea for a technology or app, he may not know what to do about it. But through this SIG, we are working with the electrical and electronics sector in Penang, which has 40 years of experience. You tell them what you want and they can do it for you. Once you have the idea and have come up build trust and engagement with that doctor, with the prototype, you need to do clinical trials. who then becomes their family doctor — they That is what SIG 3 is for: to handle research know you, you know them. We want to reintro- and technical support. duce the family doctor concept — one doctor SIG 4 is where the investor comes in to up- for one family. scale the idea into the market place. So that If they do not like the doctor, they can give has to do with the business side of things. him or her one-star and if that happens a lot, All this is a framework. We do not go into the we will terminate that doctor. If they give the details. We wait for every doctor, department, doctor three stars, we will call that doctor up clinic and hospital to fill in the blanks for us. and see how their service can be improved. We have looked at the challenges patients in It is all about quality assurance. Malaysia face, such as congested government And in the app, the patient can even identify hospitals and the rising cost of healthcare, the services they want, be it wound-dressing, and we are bringing together the best and immunisation or even chemotherapy. We are brightest to come up with affordable, intel- talking about services across the board. Yes, ligent solutions that will not only match the we are serious about taking healthcare back level of care a patient receives presently but to the community. better it.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 79 THE CONSUMER, THE ULTIMATE DISRUPTOR IN LUXURY RETAIL The integration of technology and investment in digital channels are important but when it comes to luxury and lifestyle retail, bricks and mortar still rule. BY SHARAN VALIRAM

very year forecasts warn us that the fol- TURNING at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur is showing strong Elowing year will be a tough one, filled POINT double-digit growth. Victoria’s Secret is not with challenges. The state of the economy doing great in its home country, the US, but validates these warnings and everyone goes 2018 proved the business is thriving in our markets. into the new financial year with trepidation. just how The events of 2018 proved just how unpre- Industry watchers are singing the same tune unpredictable the dictable the retail landscape could be. Starting as we enter 2019. “Pressure is mounting on retail landscape with the usual bleak outlook, then came the retailers,” they say. could be 14th general election (GE14), the change of The pressure may be on us to shake things power, tax reforms and so on. It was some- up, but the person in the driver’s seat is the what of a roller-coaster year for the Malaysian consumer. economy. The consumer can sometimes be a rather From start to finish, beginning with the prepa- fickle creature. As I am sure many retailers ration for GE14, the exchange of power and would agree, just when you think you know subsequent tax reforms, it was an interesting something about the customer, it is at that very year for all of us — and even more so for Vali- moment that they behave differently. Sudden- ram which, I am proud to report, had a strong ly, you will find new shifts in demographics, year despite the doom and gloom. attitudes and preferences. We braced ourselves for roadblocks and For a while now, the hot topic among retailers crises, but faced few if any at all. The year has been the use of artificial intelligence (AI) began as the previous years had, with a bleak and behaviour mapping to be one step ahead outlook, yet our business continued to be buoy- of the consumer. It was said that 2018 would ant. Apart from the festive Chinese New Year be the year when retailers start to discover period, there was no other explanation of why ways to translate large amounts of data into our sales would be anything but dismal, with personalised shopping experiences. all the negative news in the market. Needless to say, the exploration continues. Leading up to GE14, things were ho-hum, AI may have gained some clout by providing but not quiet. And following that, we can only solutions in certain areas, but I do not believe assume that the feel-good factor associated it has arrived at that game-changing status yet. with the change in government inspired many You can never fully understand consumer to spend. behaviour. It is unpredictable and volatile. As The subsequent zero-rating of the Goods a retailer, I would be interested in having a de- and Services Tax enabled us to have strong vice that could explore the consumer’s psyche trading months in June, July and August. We and truly comprehend the buyer’s behaviour. thought our fortunes would change with the You can try to qualify and quantify how they introduction of the Sales and Services Tax in search, shop and buy, but there is never a defin- September. But to our surprise, business re- itive answer. And in lifestyle and luxury retail, mained pretty good that month and in October. there is no one-size-fits-all formula. We recently ran very successful Black Friday If you look at the Michael Kors business glob- and Singles Day campaigns and personally, I ally, it is down everywhere else. But our store have no reason to suspect that anything will

80 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 PATRICK GOH/THE EDGE UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

81 change. But as I said before, consumer behav- it alone. We need the muscle of policymakers iour is unpredictable. We have seen business as well as mall owners and developers. come to a standstill many times, including the What Malaysia lacks is one more high-end Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) point of sale in the capital city centre. That we outbreak and the 2008 global financial crisis. do not have the right space for some of our We even had a tough time after flight MH370 premium brands shows that there is clearly a went missing in 2014, when we unfortunate- shortage. To truly move retail in this country ly made certain presumptions that derailed is to move the capital city centre. This will not us temporarily. Thankfully, we were able to just add excitement for the locals but also drive recover. the tourist market. If the luck of No 8 is to be believed, then 2018 We need to make it easy for tourists to shop was surprisingly strong for Valiram. We are in Malaysia, to establish it as a shopping haven grateful that the brands we have chosen to have for tourists. We need to remind our policymak- in our portfolio are still highly sought-after. ers that in many countries, the No 1 foreign Sharan J Valiram is That said, such good fortune is not shared exchange revenue comes from tourism. Let’s executive director of across the industry. Based on their product revert back to the heyday of no taxes for luxury luxury, lifestyle and travel retail group offerings alone, I can tell you who is enjoying brands or products. Valiram. He has played business as much as we are in Malaysia. And Policymakers also need to be receptive or a pivotal role in the among them are sure-shot classics, such as proactive when retailers try to create unique transformation of the Louis Vuitton and Gucci, and multi-brand lux- tourism products or curate retail concepts tar- group’s traditional ury watch retailers Hour Glass and Cortina. geting tourists. With the right support, you wholesale textile business into a Who is shopping? will see more players make bigger attempts thriving enterprise that At Valiram, we rely on local shoppers, not to reinvent their retail models and customer consistently delivers tourists, and that may be true for most retailers. experience. cutting-edge retail In Malaysia, bricks-and-mortar stores still rule Mall owners also have a part to play. Just concepts in travel and when it comes to lifestyle and luxury retail. Yes, look at the landscape in Dubai. While the in- downtown retail. the integration of technology and investment in dustry in the US is discussing a “retail apoc- digital channels are important, but the touch- alypse”, Dubai is a city of more than three and-feel zone remains in the store. Whether million people and 65 malls, with 10 more malls customers choose to make in-store or online under construction. The mall experience has purchases is why it is important for retailers to been redefined with The Dubai Mall credited ensure that they have established and refined with positively impacting the UAE’s economy their omnichannel operations. through the creation of innovative concepts Take our TUMI business in Australia. Since in leisure, entertainment and hospitality, and there is a preference over there for public transfor helping position Dubai as a global fashion port over owning a car, it would make sense to capital. sell products online, especially items like the The best of Malaysian mall owners in the classic black suitcase. Yet our e-store can never capital are doing their best, but they do need to sell more of that item than our physical stores. up their game. Retailers are more than willing It is not like replenishables, where you can to help, contribute and participate. They need purchase quickly without thinking twice. to start focusing on the mall experience and One can enjoy the convenience of shopping introducing more innovative food and bever- for groceries and personal care items online. age offerings to make it compelling for the But when it comes to luxury goods, consum- consumer. ers tend to want to touch and see the product The mall has become so much more than before purchasing. just a shopping space — it is a social space. Physical retail will not die. Even businesses There needs to be a reason for people to come that started online are opening physical stores, to the mall beyond shopping and mall owners subscribing to the new “brick-and-click” retail need to be more creative. model. As we ring in 2019, we will continue to watch Malaysia has an effervescent retail scene, of- the consumer, who is still in the driver’s seat. fering a great mix of high-end global brands and Our success depends on how quickly we can local independent businesses, and we are proud shift gears with the consumer’s evolving mood, to be a part of it. We believe there is greater attitude and preferences. The consumer re- potential to be achieved and retailers cannot do mains the ultimate disruptor.

82 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 THE YEAR IN PHOTOS MALAYSIA

JANUARY OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW Malaysia’s oldest shopping mall, the 44-year-old Ampang Park, stands empty and desolate, awaiting demolition. It closed its doors forever on the last day of 2017 to make way for the Ampang Park Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station. LOW YEN YEING/THEEDGEPROPERTY.COM

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 83 FEBRUARY EPF ON FIRE After the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) announced a blazing dividend of 6.9% for 2018 in February, the old EPF building in Petaling Jaya went up in flames. FOTOBERNAMA

MARCH VESSEL CAPSIZES Chinese sand-dredging vessel, JBB Rong Chang 8, capsized off Malaysia’s southern state of Johor in the waters of Parit Jawa, Muar, with 14 crewmen missing. Two were rescued 50 hours later, barely alive in the engine room, by Civil Defence personnel. FOTOBERNAMA

APRIL A COMMONWEALTH OF MASCOTS Caught between a rock and a hard place, or rather, a tiger and an orang utan. Borobi, the official mascot of 2018 Commonwealth Games held in Gold Coast, Australia, holding the Queen’s baton, flanked by SEA Games Kuala Lumpur mascot Rimau (left) and 1998 Commonwealth Games Kuala Lumpur mascot, Wira, at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium. Malaysia sent a contingent of 177 athletes, who competed in 16 sports, to the games. They won 7 gold, 5 silver and 12 bronze medals. FOTOBERNAMA

84 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 SAM FONG/THE EDGE

MAY THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN The coalition of opposition parties, Pakatan Harapan, celebrating their landmark victory. Led by Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia chairman, 92-year- old Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, they succeeded in defeating the incumbent Barisan Nasional, which had ruled the nation for 61 years. FOTOBERNAMA

JUNE A TIME TO SHOP Malaysians rejoice as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is abolished.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 85 86 and 567handbags. 2,200 rings,2,800pairsofearrings,14tiaras Razak’s residenceincluding1,400chains, from formerPrime MinisterDatukSeriNajib of goodswereconfiscatedforinvestigation that RM900milliontoRM1.1billionworth a specialpressconferencetoannounce Datuk SeriAmarSinghIsharholds Investigation Department(CCID)director BukitAmanFederal Commercial Crime TREASURE HUNT JUNE

UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

SUHAIMI YUSUF/THE EDGE

FOTOBERNAMA formation ofMalaysiain1963. and non-Muslimtoholdthispostafterthe Malaysian Bar, aswellthefirstnon-Malay barrister tobeappointeddirectlyfromthe General ofMalaysia,thefirstpractising Tommy ThomasisappointedtheAttorney- NEW AG APPOINTED JUNE

AFP questioning. in Putrajayafor headquarters Commission Anti-Corruption at theMalaysian Mansor arrives Datin SeriRosmah Former First Lady LIMELIGHT STILL INTHE JUNE JULY ‘SILA DUDUK DAN JANGAN LARI.’ The Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Muhammad V tells the House to “please sit down and don’t run”. He was responding to the walkout by many Barisan Nasional and PAS MPs the day before because they were unhappy with the nomination process of the Dewan Rakyat Speaker.

Parliamentarians FOTOBERNAMA on both sides of the divide erupted into laughter and things AUGUST proceeded relatively LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH smoothly after that. AND INFAMOUS “I have been on yachts before, but nothing like this!” Prime Minister Tun Mahathir exclaims after he visits the 91.5m superyacht at the Port Klang jetty. Equanimity, which has been valued at RM1 billion, is believed to have been bought using 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) funds. FOTOBERNAMA FOTOBERNAMA

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 87 AUGUST I AM MALAYSIAN Taza Alang Rahim, 55, spends nearly RM1,000 to buy more than 500 Jalur Gemilangs to decorate his more than 20-year- old Proton Saga Aeroback. He started decorating his vehicles with flags when he was just a teenager. FOTOBERNAMA

SEPTEMBER A WHALE OF A BOOK Tom Wright launches Billion Dollar Whale, which he co-wrote with fellow Wall Street Journal reporter Bradley Hope, their tell- all book about Low Taek Jho and his involvement in the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal. The book was sold out immediately and most bookshops have had to keep restocking it because of high demand. It has recently been launched in Malay. HARIS HASSAN/THE EDGE

DECEMBER DEMONSTRATION OF GRATITUDE The rally to thank the government for not ratifying the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) on Dec 8. It had originally been planned as a protest rally and Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahidi Hamid warned that the Malay-Muslim majority might “run amok” if the convention was ratified. FOTOBERNAMA

88 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 THE YEAR IN CARTOONS

JANUARY BITCOIN BUST On Jan. 17, the price of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin dipped below $10,000, a 50 percent decline from its record peak in December 2017. Bitcoin, which was first released in 2009, has a history of price fluctuations. Excitement over virtual currencies grew in 2017, when Wall Street and small investors in Japan and South Korea expressed interest in them, leading to a surge of ordinary investors putting their money into Bitcoin. Economists speculated that the bust was fueled by fear of regulatory crack- downs on cryptocurrency trading. VAN DAM/LANDSMEER — NETHERLANDS DAM/LANDSMEER VAN

FEBRUARY HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTING PROMPTS GUN CONTROL DEBATE IN FLORIDA Seventeen students and adults were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14 when 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who was previously expelled from the school, opened fire inside and outside the building with a semiautomatic AR-15 assault rifle. The massacre prompted a national debate over gun control. While the National Rifle Association proposed arming teachers to better protect against school shootings, anti-gun groups and Parkland students pushed for

PARESH/THE KHALEEJ TIMES - UNITED ARAB EMIRATES PARESH/THE reform. Just over three weeks after the shooting, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a number of firearm restrictions, breaking with N.R.A. opposition.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 89 MARCH XI JINPING COULD RULE INDEFINITELY On March 11, the nearly 3,000 delegates of China’s Communist-controlled National Peo- ple’s Congress almost unanimously approved an amendment to the Constitution abolishing presidential term limits, enabling President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely. The two-term limit was part of a political order put in place by Deng Xiaoping, a reform-era leader. In addition to the presidency, Mr. Xi holds the positions of Communist Party general secretary and mil-

itary chief, neither of which have term limits. — NORWAY GANG HAGEN/VERDENS

APRIL

RAÚL CASTRO STEPS DOWN AS CUBA’S PRESIDENT — SINGAPORE HENG/LIANHE ZAOBAO Raúl Castro brought an end to nearly six decades of Castro family rule when he stepped down as president of Cuba on April 19. The National Assembly named the Communist Party loyalist and First Vice President Miguel Díaz-Canel, 58, as Mr. Castro’s successor. The selection of Mr. Díaz-Canel marked an important shift of power in Cuba to a younger generation of leaders, many of whom were born after the country’s revolution. Despite his departure from the presidency, Mr. Castro, 87, announced that he would still remain head of the Communist Party until 2021.

90 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 KOTRHA/TRENCIN — SLOVAKIA KOTRHA/TRENCIN

MAY TRUMP WALKS AWAY FROM NUCLEAR DEAL American President Donald Trump ignited outrage from allies of the United States around the globe when he announced on May 8 that he was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal. The landmark deal was reached in July 2015 under the Obama administration and lifted sanctions on Iran’s oil and financial sectors in exchange for the country accepting restrictions to its nuclear program. Mr. Trump’s withdrawal fulfilled an early campaign promise to exit the deal, but his decision was met with criticism from leaders of other countries in the agreement. France, Germany and Britain announced they intended to preserve the deal. BLEIBEL/DAILY STAR — LEBANON STAR BLEIBEL/DAILY

JUNE WOMEN IN SAUDI ARABIA START DRIVING Saudi women were legally able to drive for the first time in the kingdom’s history on June 24, after Saudi Arabia officially lifted a decades-long ban. The country, the last in the world in which women could not drive, has seen years of campaigning by women’s rights activists who have sometimes been arrested and detained for their efforts. Though the lifting of the ban was championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the king’s 33-year-old son who has ordered other recent changes to improve Saudi life, it came amid continued arrests of women’s advocates.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 91 JULY VICTORY FOR LÓPEZ OBRADOR On July 1, Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared victory in Mexico’s presidential election, becoming the country’s first leftist leader in more than three decades. The veteran politician, commonly referred to by his initials AMLO, won the presidency by a landslide in which he received 53 percent of the vote. Mr. López Obrador campaigned on a promise to usher in a new era of Mexican politics, as well as to stand up to President Trump. In his victory speech, he vowed to take on high-level corruption, fight organized crime and tackle Mexico’s endemic poverty. EL TIEMPO — HONDURAS CHAVEZ/

AUGUST PLANS FOR A CENSORED SEARCH ENGINE IN CHINA News of Google’s plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China was leaked to the public on Aug. 1, prompting outrage from human rights groups and employees of the internet giant. The modified search engine would restrict content and search terms banned by the Chinese government. The project, given the code-name “Dragonfly,” began in early 2017 and marked a significant reversal for Google in China: In 2010, the company shut down its Chinese search engine in protest of censorship and online hacking in the country. VAN DAM/ LANDSMEER — THE NETHERLANDS DAM/ VAN

92 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 SEPTEMBER A BUFFER ZONE IN SYRIA’S IDLIB PROVINCE On Sept. 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reached an agreement establishing a demilitarized buffer zone in the Idlib region of Syria. The two leaders created the zone in an effort to prevent military conflict between the Syrian government and rebel forces in Idlib, as fears mounted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was preparing to launch an offensive on the last rebel stronghold. By allowing opposition supporters to stay in the demilitarized zone, which is home to about three million civilians,

Mr. Erdogan explained he hoped to avoid a — LEBANON STAR BLEIBEL/DAILY migrant crisis in Turkey.

OCTOBER POLICE ARREST SUSPECTS IN TERRORIST RING IN GERMANY German police arrested six men suspected of forming a far-right terrorist group in the city of Chemnitz on Oct. 1. A seventh man, who was arrested in a separate case in September, was believed to be the group’s leader. Federal prosecutors suspect that the men, all German nationals aged between 20 and 30, op- erated under the name “Rev- olution Chemnitz” and had been planning to carry out armed attacks on foreigners and political enemies. Dis- covery of the terrorist ring came weeks after the fatal stabbing of a German man and the subsequent arrests of two immigrants in Chem- nitz. Protests and violence between extremist groups and the police followed, reignit- ing tensions over Germany’s immigration debate. GRAFF/DAGBLADET — NORWAY GRAFF/DAGBLADET

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 93 94 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 RECLAIMING REALITY As artificial intelligence devolves into artificial stupidity, reality and truth risk being erased. BY HITO STEYERL

TURNING POINT n June 20, 2017, the BBC evening news Oopener broke down. For four minutes, a Facebook and breaking-news animation alternated random Twitter removed still pictures with tracking shots of a presenter or suspended who sat stoically in silence. The elements of millions of pages, the familiar sequence were jumbled, messed groups and up and nonsensical. accounts in an The scene was the result of a technical glitch effort to combat — a system crash. But it also served as an bots and trolls. image of automation run amok, of decades of breaking news finally resulting in broken news. The message still resonates: In this new age of artificial stupidity, technological disruption has turned destructive. Its greatest victim is reality itself. It is a far cry from an earlier period of digital expansion, when internet communication was seen to promote global exchange and understanding. The time when the word “global” was likely to attach to the word “digital” is most definitely over. The new elites in many Western countries are no longer cosmopolitan and glo- balist, but rather isolationist and identitarian. Before, technology was supposed to connect and mediate. The online world seemed like a Disney vision of multiculturalism, promoting sterile tolerance from above. Now technology divides and fragments; it identifies and ranks people. Mária Schmidt, a historian close to Hungary’s illiberal leader, Viktor Orban, argues that automation and artificial intelligence will reduce Sculptures depicting the demand for labor and thus for migration. wolves giving Nazi So automation not only disadvantages local salutes, by the artist Rainer Opolka, on workers but also benefits closed and homo- display in Chemnitz, geneous societies. It also wrecks the public

TOBIAS SCHLIE/REUTERS Germany, in September. conversation via bots and botnets impersonat-

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 95 ing real people, spreading viral disinformation The truth doesn’t fit into that mold. and broken news. The truth is a piece of work with unruly and This rise of artificial stupidity is the antithesis messy details that nevertheless require atten- of, or rather the millions of shabby little cousins tion and never fully add up. It is usually much to, artificial intelligence. Just as socialism in too complicated to be entertaining, and it may practice has been a far cry from the glorious not be to everyone’s liking at all. It may not promises of revolutionaries, artificial stupidity make things easier or more efficient — quite is a mediocre and greedy version of the sublime the opposite, in fact. If truth is not a marketable machine intelligence intended to elevate and item, like clean environments or livable neigh- improve human life. borhoods, the platforms that manage digital All sorts of minor communication appli- communication seem to show little interest in cations are artificial stupidities. And though maintaining it, letting broken news propagate. they may not seem impressive, their real-world As a result, fake reports, digital rumors and effects are baffling: the destruction of public conspiracy theories have moved from fringe to discourse and the polarization of populations; mainstream. They have also created a new re- wages and hours managed by algorithms; cus- ality. As I write this, a mob is marching through tomer service, clerical, counseling or legal work the East German town of Chemnitz, yelling Hito Steyerl is an artist, eliminated by virtual assistants or chatbots. anti-migrant slogans and chasing non-white filmmaker and writer Even simple things, such as buying a ticket people. They are not brandishing pitchforks; whose work examines media, technology for a plane, train or concert, have become ardu- they are more likely to wield cellphones. and the distribution of ous and frustrating chores in an era of targeted, After all, in Germany Facebook activity cor- images. opaque pricing. Instead of a common reality relates with white-supremacist violence. Racist and a set of rules that apply to everyone, we gatherings are organized in a matter of hours have frustration, dysfunction and a waste of on social media, and algorithms built into precious time and energy. platforms amplify social division and benefit And automation is not alone in chipping extremist organizations. Digital technology away at modern society. The few platforms augments authoritarian movements, and the that effectively own the digital communication digital native segues seamlessly into the dig- sphere today operate without serious checks ital nativist. and balances, or even basic competition in an Facts, on the other hand, are often quite open market. Their algorithms are proprietary unspectacular. They will not improve, and and unknown. There are few alternatives, if may even deteriorate, if they are “liked” or any, for consumers. shared. And both facts and the truth rely on The result is an endless cycle of broken news strong institutions, not consumers, to defend and quarter-truths, stretched and repurposed them: judiciaries, scientific communities, an ad nauseam, because in the age of artificial stu- independent press. It is no coincidence that pidity, truth is traded for popularity and reach. all those institutions are being undermined in The norms of reality TV have found a foothold many countries around the world — see the in the digital age. The point is not that there rioters in Chemnitz fuming at the “lying press,” is no reality — the point is that it’s every fact the defunding of scientific research throughout for itself, competing against all others, while the Western world or attempts at the partisan social media multiply alternative versions of realignment of judicial institutions, such as it. If you don’t like the reality you are facing, Poland’s Supreme Court. there is always another one, custom-made for There are many short-term solutions to help your preferences. prevent the further onslaught of broken news. This is our real, existing digital world: noth- Challenging or regulating monopoly platforms ing more than hourly waves of feverish and is one of them. Making their algorithms trans- toxic agitation, played out over stale main- parent and open to public assessment, legis- stream channels that discourage innovation lation and debate is another. We can ban bots and experimentation, drown in excruciating and anonymous accounts from social media, advertisements and drain people’s attention and strengthen institutions with durable and and souls. tested rules to establish and confirm facts. An unpopular truth cannot survive online But we cannot have our factuality cake and in such a world because traction is privileged eat it too. Truth will rarely be popular or prof- over veracity. And to artificially stupid automa- itable. To expect its popularity to correspond tons and algorithms, reality is defined as brute to its veracity is not even artificially stupid, quantity, by ranking, ratings and elimination. but just stupid.

96 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 THE VIRTUES OF A MORE NATURAL ARCHITECTURE

Designing sustainable cities may require smaller plans. BY BALKRISHNA DOSHI

When culture and recreation come together, TURNING communities emerge. POINT When communities become societies, a settlement is formed. A World Bank In those realities, we inhabit report concludes our aspirations of togetherness. that more than 143 million people will become “climate ustainable cities are like a forest: ev- migrants” Ser-growing and diverse. In a forest, each escaping crop branch, each trunk, each tree is unique, blos- failure, water soming in its own way. Yet everything is con- scarcity and sea- nected. Everything in the forest has its role in level rise. a cosmic symphony. The city is no different. The city, too, is an organism, both stable and fluid, static and constantly transforming. Humans are a part of the city’s inner mecha- nism, just as our cells are a part of us. Streets act as veins, connecting us to a network of life similar to a bio-diverse forest. So why do we not see our cities, our towns, our hamlets as biotechnological entities? Why do we do not plan and build them in natural ways that reignite the spirit of community, the spirit of a positive participatory culture? thrived socially, economically and culturally. Consider Jaipur, where Maharajah Sawai Jai Jaipur recalls the ancient vastu purusha Singh II ruled in 18th-century India. He envi- mandala — a philosophy of design that aims sioned the city as a paradise on earth. Taking to create a balanced and healthy environment. into account the constantly changing climate, A bonsai tree at The This ancient science shaped most of India’s as well as the movement of the sun, Mr. Singh Huntington Museum in traditional settlements, where seasonal activi- San Marino, Calif. Some created a city built around guilds and clusters Japanese homes have ties such as festivals and fairs take place. The of sustainable, cooperative housing. As Jaipur bonsai trees to provide a mandala adapts to totally different climates

BETH COLLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES BETH COLLER/THE NEW YORK cultivated the body, the mind and the spirit, it connection to nature. and places, and, in turn, inspires them.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 97 98

UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

VIJAY MATHUR/REUTERS Shrimp farms run by the World Wildlife Fund on the outskirts of Hong Kong. According to ancient Indian texts, the architect must be aware of the sustainable cycles of nature.

Unfortunately, we have since forgotten this think more of how nature connects us and how Right: The Palace of soulful approach to architecture and design, we can share and revere our intrinsic selves. Winds in Jaipur, an following instead the prevailing planning mod- In addition to such quietude, other aesthetic Indian city that thrived in the 18th century el of big budgets, large-scale structures and measures of settlements include grace, love, because of careful isolated behaviors. Consequently, our habi- compassion and humility. To animate a set- planning by Maharajah tations have become fragmented and we fail tlement one must create humble and tender Sawai Jai Singh II. to see the city’s infrastructure and life in an connections, which encourage humans to come integrated way. together and to share and to feel themselves Instead of building more megastructures — a part of a larger order, a part of Mother Earth. which constantly consume time, energy, and In ancient Indian texts, the sthapati (the human and natural resources — should we not architect or planner) has to be aware of the follow a more natural, biological approach to sustainable cycles of nature, following the architecture that would foster small but com- laws of time and energy, just as our ecosystem prehensive clusters of settlements and perhaps does. The sthapati is obliged to integrate this create a new world? natural flow with the lives of a settlement’s These smaller settlements would be sus- inhabitants. This method of interdependent tainable and replicable. They would be full of planning allows for cultural activities and energy and vitality, but they would not grow social integration. This form of sustainable beyond a certain size. They would possess the architecture gives all individuals, regardless same virtues as a bio-diverse network. of class or creed, the ability to connect with Such settlements would not waste time or their true natures. energy or natural resources. The inhabitants Isn’t this why some Japanese homes have would have global skills and a suitable, ful- a small bonsai tree to remind them of their filling lifestyle. This, as a result, could help connection to the eternal mystery of existence? salvage our planet from the present disasters Today, though we are globally connected, we and disparities that spawn anxiety and doubt are lost spiritually. Prana — the subtle energy about the future. that can only be felt — is the missing link Balkrishna Doshi is the Often, while visiting ancient towns and cities, that, if ignited, could enliven the spirit of the Pritzker Prize laureate which are socially, economically and culturally community once again. for 2018, the first Indian winner of the well-knit, we are struck by a strange, unex- Can we not apply these planning philoso- architecture world’s pected silence and slowness. Our desire to phies in the present to create a lasting envi- most prestigious

BILLY H.C. KWOK/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK H.C. KWOK/THE BILLY push, to achieve, to conquer dwindles, and we ronment of positive participatory culture? award.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 99 THE ALTERNATIVE TO ARMS As people around the world struggle for self-governance, we should remember that dialogue, not violence, put Ireland on a path to peace. BY GERRY ADAMS

hen the Second World War ended in TURNING W1945, there were 51 member states in POINT the United Nations. Today, there are 193. Many of the new states emerged out of struggle and In Gaza’s conflict as old empires crumbled. deadliest day That cycle of political struggle continues to- since 2014, the day. The Brexit crisis may cause huge economic Israeli military damage to Ireland’s economy and may even killed dozens of threaten the Good Friday Agreement. In Cat- Palestinians and alonia and the Basque Country, both of which injured thousands seek independence from Spain. In Hong Kong more.

and Palestine, people fight or have fought for the right to self-govern. The world is dominated by nations’ struggles to make their own laws and to decide their relationships with other nations. But for people to have control over the decisions that affect their lives, we must empower them through diplomacy, cooperation and dialogue. When governments put simple human decency and the rights of their people first as they negotiate the world’s conflicts, democracy will follow. That, however, is easier said than done, especially when the people responsible for upholding the law often value their own power over the common good. When I was a teenager in Belfast, I realized

that my peers and I were not being treated FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES FAITH/AGENCE PAUL

100 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 Farmers from around Catalonia march in support of the Catalonian independence referendum in 2017. Before a vote on whether Catalans would even be able to vote on their statehood, the Spanish government called on residents to stay home, confiscated paper ballots and threatened to shut down the internet.

fairly. Northern Ireland was created when the in charge. People who have power, or even the British government partitioned Ireland. People illusion of power, are loath to give it up. were divided on sectarian lines and Catholics Those on the other side of this equation — were deemed to be disloyal. We were denied the disadvantaged — include many who be- basic rights in what was effectively an apart- lieve they cannot change their situation. Some heid statelet. are reluctant even to consider that change is The inequality we experienced was deeply possible. Some are afraid of change. Some are embedded in our society, to the point of be- used to society being organized in a certain ing policy. Still, I thought that fixing it was way, even when that society discriminates only a matter of bringing it to the attention of against them. Some are too busy surviving the people in charge. Once they realized the or living their lives to consider that things problem they would rectify matters. could be different. Left: A republican I soon learned that the people in charge re- There can be no progress without political mural in Belfast. The lied on that inequality for their power. They struggle, but for it to succeed, people must British army’s longest continuous campaign were unlikely to eradicate it if that would cost be empowered. They need to have a stake in saw soldiers deployed them their leverage, and any solution would society and in their communities. They have to Northern Ireland from

SAMUEL ARANDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK SAMUEL ARANDA/THE be tempered to a degree that would keep them to be cherished, and their humanity has to 1969 to 2007.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 101 Israeli border police chase a Palestinian youth during a clash with protesters in the Old City of Jerusalem. Peace in the Middle East remains elusive, despite decades of dialogue.

be respected and defended. They have rights to take risks, and with the support of the in- and entitlements that must be upheld and pro- ternational community. It is still very much moted. Society needs to be citizen-centered, unfinished business. shaped around these rights. In the conflict between the Spanish state The reality, of course, is that progressive and the Basque independence campaigners a change in society rarely comes of its own ac- similar process, closely modeled on Ireland’s, cord. It has to be engineered, negotiated for. has succeeded in ending armed conflict, even Violence often breeds when people believe though the Spanish government has not fully that they have been left with no alternative. engaged so far. Sinn Fein leaders have often And this belief can become more entrenched traveled to other conflict zones, including Gerry Adams has been as states use extrajudicial and violent means Afghanistan and Colombia, advocating the a member of Ireland’s to defend their interests. primacy of dialogue, negotiations and peace Sinn Fein political party since the 1960s. Annual worldwide military spending is es- processes. He was an architect timated to be over $1.7 trillion today, whereas I have traveled to the Middle East on several of the Good Friday the United Nations and its related agencies occasions, speaking to Palestinians, visiting Agreement, which spend around $30 billion annually. Conflict is the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and speak- helped to end the fueled by poverty, economic exploitation and ing to senior leaders in Israel and Palestine. troubles in Northern Ireland, and is the desire to control water rights, oil reserves Regrettably, the failure of governments to up- currently a member of and other natural resources. hold international law and U.N. resolutions, the Irish Parliament. Britain had fought dozens of counterinsur- and the Israeli government’s refusal to defend gency wars before it sent its soldiers to Irish democratic norms and find equitable and fair streets in 1969. It had a well-established policy compromises, has left many Palestinians liv- that saw the law, according to Brigadier Frank ing in desperate conditions, with no hope of a Kitson, as “just another weapon in the govern- different, better future. As a result, the Middle ment’s arsenal … little more than a propaganda East exists in a permanent state of conflict. cover for the disposal of unwanted members To change this demands a genuine effort of the public.” to understand what motivates, inspires and Irish republicans and others succeeded in drives people to make the choices they do. shifting from conflict to peace by building an The dialogue that fosters that understanding alternative to armed struggle with the Good is what ultimately empowers opposing sides Friday Agreement. It provides for certain rights of a conflict to come together. for Northern Ireland, including the right to a Whoever described politics as the art of the referendum on whether to remain a part of possible was reducing politics to a mediocre Britain or to end that relationship and estab- trade. People’s expectations of their worth must lish a united Ireland. The agreement emerged be raised — not lowered. When we do that, slowly as a result of hard work, with parties we enable democracy to take hold in even the

and governments eventually being prepared most dire situations. TIMES, URIEL SINAI/THE NEW YORK

102 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 20 THINGS THAT HAPPENED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2018 Surprising, serious and sometimes silly events and trends noted for the first time ever in 2018. BY TRICIA TISAK

PAINTING 01. SETS RECORD FOR LIVING AFRICAN- AMERICAN ARTIST The painting “Past Times” by Kerry James Marshall set a new record as the highest amount paid for a painting by a living African-American artist, selling for $21.1 million, according to the auction house Sotheby’s. The 1997 pastoral, which depicts black figures at leisure, was purchased by music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. It was sold by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, in Chicago, which bought it for

$25,000. SOTHEBY’S 01 APPLE gust, with Amazon in close uted to a shrinking middle than those who live 15 miles 02. BECOMES FIRST pursuit, reaching the bench- class and rising income in- inland. Studies have shown COMPANY TO REACH mark just a month later. The equality, experts say. that larger spleens can aid in VALUE OF $1 TRILLION rise of these so-called super- deep diving among marine Apple became the first star firms have helped spur A NEW KIND animals. publicly traded company a long period of economic 03. OF HUMAN to reach a market value of growth in the United States, ADAPTATION A UNIFIED more than $1 trillion in Au- but may have also contrib- Researchers have reported 04. KOREA, AT a new kind of human adap- LEAST ON THE ICE tation — to the ocean. Ac- Members of the women’s cording to the journal Cell, a ice-hockey team from North group of people known as the Korea and South Korea Bajau, who traditionally live played as a joint team at the in houseboats or houses on XXIII Olympic Games in stilts in villages in Southeast Pyeongchang, marking the Asia, have evolved to be bet- first time the countries had ter divers. The researchers’ a unified Olympic team. The findings reveal that the Ba- team lost in its first game, jau — regardless of whether to Switzerland. South Korea, they’re divers or have other however, went on to win a to- jobs — have spleens that tal of 17 medals in the games,

MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS are about 50 percent bigger including five gold medals. 02

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 103 FIRST-EVER 05. ‘SAUSAGE DOG’ MUSEUM OPENS Two former florists opened what they say is the first museum dedicated to “sausage dogs.” The Dack- elmuseum, which is in Ba- varia, Germany, features canine stamps, dog-shaped breads, porcelain figurines, prints and other items dedicated to the dachshund, one of Germany’s oldest canine breeds.

FIRST 06. PEDESTRIAN FATALITY BY A SELF-

DRIVING CAR TIMES LEE/THE NEW YORK CHANG W. A self-driving Uber test 04 car killed a pedestrian in still bore hallmarks of the outstripped Apple smart- MACHINE Tempe, Arizona, in March, conservative kingdom. De- phone sales, selling more 10. TACKLES SEA in what is believed to be spite the all-female audienc- than 54 million phones in OF PLASTIC GARBAGE the first pedestrian fatality es, a social media ban was the second quarter of 2018, The world’s first machine caused by an autonomous in place so photos of wom- compared to Apple’s 41 designed to clean up plastic vehicle. Although the car en without their abayas, or million, and trailing only detritus from the ocean — had a backup driver, nei- floor-length overgarments, Samsung. The company’s the brainchild of a college ther he nor the car’s light wouldn’t leak. Organizers, success is all the more im- dropout who came up with detection and radar system however, hailed the event as pressive considering that the idea as a teenager— was sensed the pedestrian, a a pivotal moment for women Huawei has failed to make deployed in September to- woman who was attempt- in a country where they still inroads in some of the ward what’s widely known ing to cross the street with are expected to defer to their world’s largest markets, in- as the “great Pacific gar- her bicycle, in time to stop. male guardians. cluding the United States, bage patch.” This expanse in part because of corporate of ocean, located between SAUDI ARABIA CHINESE and government espionage Hawaii and California, has 07. HOSTS FIRST 08. COMPANY fears. the world’s largest accumu- FASHION WEEK SURPASSES APPLE’S lation of ocean plastic. Some Saudi Arabia hosted its SMARTPHONE SALES PARIS MUSEUM experts, however, are wor- first-ever fashion week in For the first time, the Chi- 09. OPENS ITS ried that the machine will do Riyadh, in April. The event nese company Huawei has DOORS TO NUDISTS more harm than good, argu- For the first time in Paris, ing that it would be better to a museum has welcomed focus on efforts preventing nude figures of a different plastic from entering the kind: living ones. The Palais seas in the first place. de Tokyo contemporary art museum opened its doors FRENCH to nudists for a one-off tour 11. LAWMAKERS scheduled by the Paris Na- BAN SMART DEVICES turists Association. Paris IN SCHOOLS also has the world’s first na- A law banning smart de- turist restaurant, O’Naturel, vices at schools in France which opened in late 2017, went into effect in Septem- as well as an area at a pub- ber. Students the age of lic park that is dedicated to 3 to 15 will have to leave people who prefer wearing their smartphones, tablets

GIUSEPPE CACACE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES GIUSEPPE CACACE/AGENCE their birthday suits. and other digital devices at 07

104 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 IKEA OPENS time, China participated in 14. FIRST STORE the exercises, sending hel- IN INDIA icopters and about 3,200 of Ikea opened its first Indian its troops. store in Hyderabad, tweak- ing its usual strategy by MEXICO’S FIRST cutting prices and changing 16. REALITY SERIES its inventory — and even its “Made in Mexico,” which fol- café offerings — to appeal lows the lavish lives of nine to the Indian consumer. The socialites in Mexico City, world’s largest furniture started streaming in Sep- JIJI PRESS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES JIJI PRESS/AGENCE retailer plans to open three tember. The Netflix-backed other stores in the next two series, Mexico’s first reality years to cater to the coun- program, has faced some try’s rapidly growing middle heat, however, with critics class. pointing out that it’s in poor taste in a country where RUSSIA FLEXES nearly half the population 15. ITS MUSCLES lives in poverty. In its largest show of military strength since the days of CANADA the Cold War, Russia assem- 17. LEGALIZES bled nearly 300,000 troops, RECREATIONAL 1,000 aircraft and 900 tanks MARIJUANA for the exercises known as Canada became the first ma- Vostok-2018. And for the first jor world economy to legal-

12 home or turned off on school but women couldn’t apply to premises, with exceptions be fighter pilots until 2015, for disabled students or dur- when a ban was lifted as ing extracurricular activities. part of a nationwide initia- Some lawmakers scoffed at tive to increase the number the new law as overkill, cit- of women in the workplace. ing an existing rule that already prohibits smartphone AFRICA use during instruction time 13. LAUNCHES in classrooms. ITS FIRST WASTE-TO- ENERGY PLANT FEMALE Ethiopia is the first country in 12. FIGHTER PILOT Africa to open a waste-to-en- BREAKS GENDER ergy plant. Top government BARRIER IN JAPAN officials, including Ethiopian Japan, which has a President Mulatu Teshome, male-dominated workforce, were on hand at the inau- named its first female fight- guration of the $120 million er pilot in August. First Lt. plant, called Reppie, which Misa Matsushima, 26, who was built in a landfill on the cited the American movie outskirts of Addis Ababa. It “Top Gun” as an inspira- is supposed to take about 80 tion, joined the Japan Air percent of the daily waste Self Defense Force in 2014. generated by the capital and The JASDF began accepting fulfill about 30 percent of its

female applicants in 1993, energy needs. TIMES LOKE/THE NEW YORK ATUL 14

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 105 The Parker Solar Probe, the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, was launched in August. The craft is named after astrophysicist Eugene N. Parker, who was the first to describe solar wind in 1958. The probe, which has set a new record as the fastest spacecraft, is the closest any manmade object has been

MLADEN ANTONOV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES MLADEN ANTONOV/AGENCE to the sun.

LOOKING AHEAD

DISNEYLAND TO SERVE ALCOHOL PUBLICLY FOR THE FIRST TIME Bottoms up, Mouseketeers. Disneyland will serve alco- 15 hol to the general public for For the first time in more than the first time in 2019, when 150 years, a law banning Oga’s Cantina opens in consensual gay sex in India the highly anticipated Star has been deemed unconsti- Wars–themed attraction,

CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS tutional by the highest court Galaxy Edge. in the land. Introduced to In- dian law under British colo- FIRST TEST FLIGHTS nial rule, the rule was rarely FOR COMMERCIAL enforced, but critics said it SPACE TAXIS made the blackmail, sexual SCHEDULED assault and harassment of The year 2019 is slated to be L.G.B.T. people permissible. an exciting one for commercial space travel: Both the FIRST NASA SpaceX Dragon capsule and 20. SPACECRAFT the Boeing Starliner space- NAMED AFTER LIVING craft are scheduled for their PERSON LAUNCHES first crewed test flights. 17 ize recreational marijuana. people, according to new sta- It’s the second country in the tistics released by Eurostat. world — after Uruguay — to The agency estimates that pass such legislation. Since about 150 million pigs live mid-October, people over 18 in the European Union, with could legally purchase and 40 percent of them in Germa- use dried cannabis flowers ny and Spain. And according and oils. Legalization is ex- to new figures released by

pected to generate billions the Spanish government, the FRANCE-PRESSE -— GETTY IMAGES AGENCE of dollars in revenue once number of slaughtered pigs, fully implemented. at 50 million, outnumber the country’s population of 46.5 MORE PIGS million. 18. THAN PEOPLE IN DENMARK INDIA’S HIGH Pigs now outnumber people 19. COURT STRIKES in Denmark: 215 pigs per 100 DOWN BAN ON GAY SEX 20

106 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 HOW TO SAVE THE WEB Governments, businesses and users around the world must commit to a set of fundamental principles for the web. BY TIM BERNERS-LEE

n recent years, it has become clear that TURNING Development. At any other time in the web’s Ithe web is not living up to the high hopes POINT 30-year history, the collective response to this we had for it. Built as an open tool for collab- tipping point would likely have been: “Great! oration and empowerment, the web has been By 2019, 50 Now let’s get everyone else connected as quick- hijacked by crooks and trolls who have used it percent of the ly as possible.” But the world has changed. to manipulate people all over the world. global population After years of the web being seen as a potential To preserve a web that serves all of humanity, will be online. net force for good, such technological optimism not just the privileged and the powerful, we has been eclipsed by fears that the web might will have to fight for it. That’s why I’m asking be damaging our societies. governments, companies and citizens across These worries are justified. In recent years, the globe to commit to a set of core principles we’ve seen governments engage in state-spon- for the web. sored trolling to quash dissent and attack By the end of 2019, 50 percent of the world’s opposition. We’ve seen hacking and foreign population will be using the internet, according interference distort politics and undermine to a recent report from the United Nations-af- elections. And we’ve seen how the spread of

FABRICE COFFRINI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES COFFRINI/AGENCE FABRICE filiated Broadband Commission for Digital fake news on social media can trigger chaos,

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 107 Alexander Nix, the former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, arrives at the company’s offices in central London on March 20, 2018.

confusion and lethal violence. When we learned last year that Cambridge Analytica had used the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users to influence voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we woke up to the fact that we had lost control of our data — and that the consequences could change the world. But we must not give up on the promise of the web. All technologies come with risks. We drive cars despite the possibility of serious accidents. We take prescription drugs despite the danger of abuse and addiction. We build safeguards into new innovations so we can manage the risks while benefiting from the opportunities. The web is a global platform — its challenges stretch across borders and cultures. Just as the web was built by millions of people collaborating around the world, its future relies on our collective ability to make it a better tool for everyone. As we forge the web of tomorrow, we need a set of guiding principles that can define the kind of web we want. Identifying these will not be easy — any agreement that covers a diverse group of countries, cultures and interests will never be. But I believe it’s possible to develop a set of basic ideals that we can all agree on, and that will make the web work better for everyone, including the 50 percent of the say that internet companies must play their world’s population that has yet to come online. part in making sure the web is safe, accessi- Governments, companies and individuals ble and protects user data. They make it clear all have unique roles to play. The World Wide that individual citizens have a responsibility to Web Foundation, an organization I founded in act with compassion and challenge negative 2009 to protect the web as a public good, has behavior they wouldn’t tolerate offline. Most drawn up a set of core principles outlining the importantly, the principles say that we have responsibilities that each party has to protect a to stand up and fight for a web that serves web that serves all of humanity. We’re asking everyone. If we, the billions of people using everyone to sign on to these principles and the web, don’t defend it, who will? join us as we create a formal Contract for the Based on these fundamental principles, the Web in 2019. Contract for the Web will establish a new set The principles specify that governments of norms to guide the digital policy agendas of are responsible for connecting their citizens governments and the decisions of companies

to an open web that respects their rights. They as they build tomorrow’s web technologies. NICHOLLS/REUTERS HENRY

108 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web and a founding director of the World Wide Web Foundation.

Those who support and help develop the con- has created countless new industries, fueling tract will not only show their commitment to widespread innovation. the future of the web; they will help shape it. As a comparatively young invention, this If we want a web that works for us, we must is just the beginning of what the web has to work for the web’s future. offer. Imagine what we will be able to accom- Ten years ago, when Rosemary Leith and I plish once the next huge tranche of the world’s started the World Wide Web Foundation, few- population is online and contributing to the er than one in four people were online. Our web’s explosive creativity. task was to get more people connected and to The good news is, the appetite to take on the keep the web open and free so that everyone web’s challenges has never been greater. Let’s could benefit from all it had to offer. The web make sure the next billion people connect to saves lives and creates livelihoods. It puts a web worth having. Let’s make 2019 the year the world’s information at our fingertips and we push back against the forces subverting connects us with friends and family across the open spirit of the web. We need a free and the globe. It powers social movements and open web for everyone.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 109 JANUARY TERROR IN AFGHANISTAN THE YEAR Almost 100 people were killed when an ambulance exploded on a busy Kabul street on Jan. 27. After passing through one security checkpoint, the driver of the ambulance det- IN PHOTOS onated explosives inside the vehicle when he reached a second stop. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing. It was the deadliest attack on Afghan soil in months, and GLOBAL came a few days after a Taliban siege of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul left 22 people dead. The government called the ambulance attack a crime against humanity, and blamed neighboring Pakistan, which, officials claimed, aided Taliban leaders. ANDREW QUILTY/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK ANDREW QUILTY/THE

JANUARY MUDSLIDES AND FIRES DEVASTATE CALIFORNIA At least 21 people died in the mudslides that flooded Montecito, Calif., on Jan. 9. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported that more than 65 homes had been destroyed and hundreds more were damaged. A series of wildfires had engulfed Southern California in the preceding months, burning vegetation and damaging soil that could have slowed the mudslides. The Thomas Fire alone burned 281,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in December 2017, setting a record for the largest fire in state history. Experts warned that damage from these fires could leave the area vulnerable to mudslides for years to come. JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK

110 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 SAUL MARTINEZ/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK MARTINEZ/THE SAUL

FEBRUARY VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE AT FLORIDA HIGH SCHOOL Seventeen people were killed when Nikolas Cruz, 20, opened fire on students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14. It was the deadliest school shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in 2012. In the months following the shooting, student survivors of the attack took an active role advocating for stricter gun control, forming a political action committee and leading the nationwide March for Our Lives demonstration the following month. SUMAYA HISHAM/REUTERS SUMAYA

FEBRUARY ZUMA’S RULE ENDS IN SOUTH AFRICA The once seemingly untouchable Jacob Zuma resigned as president of South Africa on Feb. 14, after almost nine years in office. Mr. Zuma’s political party, the African National Congress, pressured him to step down after he initially refused to leave the post voluntarily. His rule was marred with ethical misconduct, including widespread influence peddling and corruption. Mr. Zuma, an anti-apartheid fighter who was imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, was succeeded as president by Cyril Ramaphosa.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 111 MARCH DEL TORO’S ‘SHAPE OF WATER’ WINS BIG AT THE OSCARS On March 4, Guillermo del Toro took home the Oscar for best director at the 90th Academy Awards, marking the fourth time in five years that a Mexican filmmaker was awarded the di- recting prize. Among his fellow nominees were Greta Gerwig, the fifth woman to be nominated in the category for her directorial debut “Lady Bird,” and Jordan Peele, who became the fifth African-American director in Oscar history to be nominated, for his film “Get Out.” Mr. Del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” a fish-out-of-water fantasy set during the Cold War, also won awards for best picture, best original score

NOEL WEST/THE NEW YORK TIMES NOEL WEST/THE NEW YORK and best production design. KOREA SUMMIT PRESS POOL/THE NEW YORK TIMES) SUMMIT PRESS POOL/THE NEW YORK KOREA

APRIL KOREAS MAKE STRIDES TOWARD PEACE On April 27, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea met in the Demilitarized Zone, the stretch of land dividing the Korean Peninsula. After shaking hands from their respective sides of the border, Mr. Kim crossed over and became the first North Korean leader to do so since the Korean partition in 1945. The encounter culminated in an agreement to pursue a “nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” and an end to the Korean War. The thaw between the two countries, facilitated by the election of the pro-reunification Mr. Moon in 2017 and a conciliatory New Year address by Mr. Kim, continued in later months with meetings between North and South Korean officials, collaboration in sport events, and agreements aimed at easing military tensions.

112 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 MAY MOVIE MOGUL ARRESTED IN NEW YORK On May 25, police in New York City arrested Harvey Weinstein, the former movie mogul who has been accused of sexual harassment or assault by over 80 women. Mr. Weinstein was released on bail on the same day and was later indicted on multiple sexual assault charges. He pleaded not guilty to all counts. Accusations against Mr. Weinstein opened the floodgates of the #MeToo movement, which exposed sexual misconduct by dozens of men in power. TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK

MAY KILAUEA’S FIERCE ERUPTION CAUSES THOUSANDS TO FLEE Preceded by a sequence of earthquakes, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted on May 3. Kilauea, located on the archipelago’s Big Island, is the youngest of the five volcanoes that formed the American state and one of the world’s most active. As the volcano erupted, deep cracks in the earth spewed debris and dangerously high levels of sulfur diox- ide gas, and a plume of ash rose 30,000 feet in the air. Thousands of people were forced to evacuate the surrounding area and hundreds of homes were destroyed, though there were no casualties. Hawaii’s tourism industry took a serious hit as cruise ships canceled stops at

TAMIR KALIFA/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK KALIFA/THE TAMIR the Big Island and hotel bookings plummeted.

JUNE HISTORIC SUMMIT IN SINGAPORE On June 12, President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shook hands at a historic summit in Singapore. It was the first meeting ever between a sitting American president and the head of North Korea. Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim posed for photographs and made brief statements before heading into a 45-minute one-on-one session with only translators present. The two leaders eventually signed a joint agreement pledging to work toward North Korea’s denuclearization and foster a more stable Korean Peninsula. The United States later suspended joint military exercises with South Korea, in what appeared

DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK to be a concession to the North.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 113 JUNE OUTRAGE OVER FAMILY SEPARATIONS AT BORDER President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 20 that ended family separations along the United States-Mexico border. The administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on immigration called for the criminal prosecution of any adult caught illegally crossing the border, and more than 2,000 children were separated from their parents in April and May as a result. Amid reports of parents and children in distress, public outrage forced the Trump administration to backtrack, though Mr. Trump’s executive order fell short of addressing what would happen

TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES TODD HEISLER/THE NEW YORK to the children who had already been separated from their families. PHILIPPE WOJAZER/REUTERS

JULY FRANCE TAKES WORLD CUP TITLE On July 15, France won the 2018 FIFA World Cup, beating Croatia 4-2 in a thrilling final match at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. The victory was France’s second World Cup win, and came 20 years after the French team defeated Brazil in 1998 to claim its first title. France’s win capped off an edition of the tournament marred by controversy, as allegations of corruption surfaced surrounding Russia’s bid to host the event, and criticism mounted against President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Just days before the World MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY/REUTERS Cup kicked off, Nike made headlines when the company announced it would no longer JULY be outfitting the Iranian national soccer team A ‘BLOOD MOON’ ECLIPSE due to new sanctions imposed by the United On July 27, much of the world witnessed the longest total lunar eclipse States on Iran. of the 21st century. The “blood moon” eclipse lasted 103 minutes, and while it was not visible in North America, it was seen in its totality in Europe, Africa and parts of Asia. The celestial event occurred in the same month that Mars moved the closest it’s been to Earth in 15 years.

114 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 PAULO NUNES DOS SANTOS/THE NEW YORK TIMES NUNES DOS SANTOS/THE NEW YORK PAULO

AUGUST POPE VISITS IRELAND AS CHURCH SCANDAL INTENSIFIES On Aug. 25, Pope Francis arrived in Ireland for a two-day visit to attend the World Meeting of Families, a gathering of Roman Catholics. The event, the first papal visit to Ireland in nearly 40 years, took place amid the child sexual abuse scandal that has shaken the church in recent years. The scandal gained momentum following the church’s revelations that The- odore McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, had engaged in sexual misconduct decades ago. In a speech in Dublin, the pope acknowledged the crisis, but his failure

NICOLE TUNG/THE NEW YORK TIMES NICOLE TUNG/THE NEW YORK to offer a concrete plan of action — as well as reports that he had helped cover up Mr. AUGUST McCarrick’s conduct — drew sharp criticism. TROUBLED TIMES FOR TURKEY Turkey’s currency hit a record low in August as the country weathered its worst economic crisis since 2001. On Aug. 13, the lira’s exchange rate reached 7.2 against the dollar; it was about 3.8 lira against the dollar at the beginning of 2018. Economists attributed much of the responsibility to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has relied on debt to subsidize vast infrastructure projects. A standoff between Turkey and the United States, which imposed sanctions in response to Ankara’s detention of an American pastor on spying charges, ac- celerated the Turkish lira’s fall.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 115 SEPTEMBER FIRE GUTS NATIONAL MUSEUM IN BRAZIL On Sept. 2, a devastating fire broke out at Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. The blaze quickly engulfed the 200-year-old building, which housed more than 20 million artifacts from ancient Egypt, Rome and Brazil’s indigenous cultures. Museum officials said that almost 90 percent of the collection — which included documents, artwork and human remains — were destroyed in the fire. Founded in 1818 by King John VI of Portugal, the Na- tional Museum was Brazil’s oldest scientific institution, but had suffered years of financial

neglect and lacked a sprinkler system. TIMES NEW YORK LIANNE MILTON/THE FRANCIS MASCARENHAS/REUTERS

SEPTEMBER VICTORY FOR GAY RIGHTS IN INDIA Supporters of gay rights in India rejoiced on Sept. 6 after the country’s Supreme Court issued a ruling decriminalizing consensual gay sex. The court’s five judges voted unanimously to overturn a 2013 judgment reinstating a 157-year-old ban on sex that is considered “against the order of nature.” Thousands of gay people had been prosecuted under the law before it was ruled unconstitutional in 2009. India’s Chief Justice Dipak Misra called the law, known as Section 377, “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary.” The landmark ruling was a major victory for L.G.B.T. activists in India, where homosexuality is often considered taboo.

116 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 OZAN KOSE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES OZAN KOSE/AGENCE

OCTOBER JOURNALIST IS KILLED IN SAUDI CONSULATE On Oct. 2, Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist from Saudi Arabia, disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Mr. Khashoggi, who was critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and lived in self-imposed exile in the United States, had gone to the consulate to obtain documents related to his upcoming marriage. The Saudi government initially denied involvement in the disappear- ance of Mr. Khashoggi, but Turkish officials later accused a team of 15 Saudi operatives in his killing. Saudi authorities eventually admitted

CARLOS OSORIO/REUTERS CARLOS that the missing journalist had been killed by rogue officials after an altercation, but denied OCTOBER claims that the murder had been ordered by CANADA LEGALIZES MARIJUANA Prince Mohammed. On Oct. 17, Canada became the world’s second country after Uruguay to legalize recreational marijuana. Under the country’s Cannabis Act, adults may buy up to 30 grams of marijuana from federally licensed distributors. The legislation fulfilled a campaign promise from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who argued that legalization would help reduce marijuana-related crime and curb underage use of the drug. According to an estimate from Deloitte, Canada’s marijuana industry is expected to generate up to $4.3 billion in its first year.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 117 THROWING OPEN THE SCHOOLHOUSE DOORS, ONCE AND FOR ALL We can send every child to school by 2030. Here’s how to pay for it. BY GORDON BROWN

n 1848, republican revolts against European TURNING Imonarchies ended in failure and repres- POINT sion. The year was said to be a turning point at which history failed to turn. Between 2000 Almost certainly 2018 will mark a similar and 2018, the turning point. The year saw Donald Trump’s number of African protectionism, Chinese expansionism, a re- children enrolled born nationalism in India and Japan, Iranian in primary empire-building, and Russian opportunism school more than all combine to undermine the international doubled, rising cooperation that has sustained the 70-year-old from 60 million to postwar global order. 150 million. Among the casualties have been agreements on climate change, nuclear weapons and trade, as the world suddenly appears divided and leaderless. For the time being at least, lip service is being paid to the United Nations’ internationally sanctioned Sustainable Development Goals, which set ambitious deadlines to end illiteracy, avoidable disease, malnutrition and extreme poverty by 2030. But there is now growing evidence that, despite the valiant efforts of António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, and his deputy, Amina J. Mohammed, these goals are being subverted by our collective failure to agree on a means to finance them. The fourth Sustainable Development Goal — equitable and inclusive quality education for all — commits us to make our generation, A recent World Bank study shows that child by 2030, the first in history to send every child marriage could become a thing of the past if to school. all girls attended school. Unfortunately, about Today, the shameful reality is that 260 million 230 million of the 430 million school-age girls children aren’t going to class. Among those in in low- or lower-middle-income countries will school, a total of 400 million will leave before never complete their secondary education, ac- they turn 12, and more than 800 million, half cording to the Unesco Institute for Statistics. the developing world’s boys and girls, will end And female illiteracy has a devastating effect on their secondary schooling with no recognizable a community’s health, with infant mortality in

qualifications for the modern workforce. Africa far higher among uneducated mothers. FRANCE-PRESSE SARKAR/AGENCE DIBYANGSHU — GETTY IMAGES

118 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 Despite the scholastic mountain we have have yet to materialize, and while global health A Rohingya Muslim to climb, international aid for education has and educational institutions in developed refugee from Myanmar fallen over the past decade from 13 percent countries are blessed with outstanding pri- attends an informal school at the Balukhali of all aid to just 10 percent. At just $10 per vate philanthropists, global education has yet refugee camp in child per year, that’s not even enough money to discover its latter-day Andrew Carnegie. Bangladesh's Ukhia to cover the cost of a secondhand textbook. Business investments in global education have district. The much-vaunted public-private partner- been a fraction of the investments in global ships that were expected, in the words of the health or the environment. World Bank, International Monetary Fund and With only 12 years until the 2030 deadline United Nations, to turn “billions into trillions,” to achieve universal education, we are at a

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 119 Palestinian girls walk past sacks of flour on their way to school outside a United Nations compound at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

moment of truth. Barring a dramatic shift in By offering developing countries affordable policy, 200 million school-age children will not financing, the new fund will plug a yawning be in class in 2030. Instead, they will most chasm in the architecture of international aid. likely be on the streets, where they will be It will be created from guarantees provided by easy prey for extremists who will exploit our donor countries: $2 billion leveraged up by bor- broken promises on education as proof that rowing in the marketplace into $8 billion worth peaceful co-existence can never work. of funding. And this will be supplemented by If they aren’t on the streets, these millions $2 billion of grant aid, allowing us to cut the of young people, denied educational and em- interest charged on the loans. Converting a ployment opportunities in their home countries, $2 billion grant into $8 billion of aid will make Gordon Brown, the will be on the move. Unless some of the world’s the funding we offer go four times as far as former prime minister wealth moves to Africa, Africans will increas- conventional aid. of Britain, is the United Nations special envoy ingly move to the world’s wealth, as millions of In return for this enhanced international for global education would-be migrants convince themselves that financing, developing countries would be and the author of being poor in a rich country is better than being called upon to double their own investments “Gordon Brown: My rich in a poor country. in education, from the current 2 to 3 percent Life, Our Times.” The $10 billion International Finance Facility to a 4 to 5 percent share of national income. for Education can break through the aid stale- This would be enough to create the additional mate. Proposed by the Education Commission, 200 million schools needed to finally get all an international initiative I chair, the fund is children into the classroom. focused on the more than 700 million chil- A global fund for education on a scale that dren living in the world’s lower-middle-income matches the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tu- countries, which themselves contain the vast berculosis and Malaria would help honor our majority of refugees and displaced children. long-delayed promise of education for all and These 50 or so countries are too poor to bring one of the worst-funded Sustainable De- finance the cost of universal education them- velopment Goals within reach. selves, but too wealthy to qualify for substantive It would also send a timely message to the grants from multilateral development banks. world: that even in the most insular and pro- The loans that are available carry a 4 percent tectionist of environments, we can advance interest rate. As a result, only $350 million, international cooperation and prove that glo- or 50 cents per child per year, is devoted to balization can still work for those who have

education in these nations. been left behind. FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES SAID KHATIB/AGENCE

120 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019

2018, AS SEEN BY FIVE ARTISTS Turning Points asked five artists to select one of their own artworks and describe how it symbolized or reflected 2018. Their responses are below.

ZOE BUCKMAN

“Heavy Rag” (2018)

2018: The year that the words “rape,” “assault” and “harass” became inescapable, appearing seemingly everywhere online and in news media across the United States. The year some heads rolled and lives were ruined, and the year many tales were forgotten too quickly or discredited in too brutal a manor. The year of too much jumping on the bandwagon. The year of attempted payback, misguided payback and zero payback. The year of not enough follow-through and pitiful justice. The year

women were taught that little has changed KELBAUGH CASEY BY NEW YORK/PHOTOGRAPH BENDA, OF ZOE BUCKMAN AND ALBERTZ COURTESY and they’re still not safe. The year the words “F.B.I. investigation” elicited instant eye rolls and a crushing sense of déjà vu. The year I became even more proud of so many of us — and remained ever unsurprised by the actions of so many more. The year I learned some new tools, and was reminded of some old, forgotten ones. The year of triggers, and wounds unwound, and Nia Wilson, and Brett Kavanagh, and nausea.

Zoe Buckman is a British-born multidisciplinary artist whose work centers on issues of feminism, equality and mortality.

122 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 GEORGE CONDO

“Facebook” (2017-18)

Over the last couple of years, my work has Social media is the main culprit for the rise been exhibited all over the world: Paris, Ath- of this artificial-realist politics. I created this ens, Hong Kong, Denmark, Washington, D.C. painting, “Facebook,” to exorcise the lies that I During my travels, interviewers asked for my believe are inherent in a culture of friends who opinion on American politics. Everyone wanted friend you and are not your friends — an ag- to know what the problem was: Had Ameri- glomeration of bots, trolls and alien information. ca succumbed to fake news — had the fake The message of politics today is fear and, become real? unfortunately, fear is working. But we can take In 1988, I wrote a short essay about my ar- back control; we can simply stop being afraid. tistic theories. In it, I discussed something Art has emerged as one of our last truthful ex- I called “Artificial Realism,” an artistic style periences. Artists must point their brushes at I employed in my own paintings and one I the government and say, “STOP LYING TO US!” defined in part as “the appearance of reality through the representation of the artificial.” George Condo is an American visual artist whose In the 30 years since, Artificial Realism has abstract paintings and surreal portraits, primarily moved beyond the realm of art to take over of fictional characters, draw on a variety of sources and styles. His work appears in the permanent global politics, setting off a nuclear explosion collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the in the realm of truth. In 2018, truth has been Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the blown to smithereens. Tate Modern in London, among other institutions. COURTESY OF GEORGE CONDO, SKARSTEDT, NEW YORK, AND SPRÜTH MAGERS, BERLIN, LONDON, LOS ANGELES AND SPRÜTH MAGERS, NEW YORK, SKARSTEDT, OF GEORGE CONDO, COURTESY

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 123 RDAM, NETHERLANDS RDAM,

ALFREDO JAAR

“Shadows” (2014)

This image by the Dutch photojournalist Koen to Rwanda to witness the terrible aftermath of Wessing depicts one of the deepest expressions the genocide during which, in 1994, roughly of grief I have ever seen. It was taken in Estelí, one million people were killed in 100 days. Nicaragua, in 1978 during the revolt against And yet nothing can numb me to the cruelty, to the Somoza regime — at the moment two sis- the monstrosity, of the Trump administration’s ters were informed of their father’s death. Mr. actions against innocent immigrant children Wessing’s photograph served as the starting in the United States. point for my 2014 installation “Shadows,” the In these dark times, I look for refuge in second work in a trilogy exploring the power “Requiem,” a poem by the Russian poet Anna and politics of iconic images. Akhmatova: Today, when I read about immigrant families I have a lot of work to do today; being torn apart, I remember this photograph. I need to slaughter memory, When I read about babies being forcibly tak- Turn my living soul to stone en from their mothers, I remember this pho- Then teach myself to live again. tograph. When I read about children being housed in cages, I remember this photograph. Alfredo Jaar is a Chilean-born conceptual artist When I read about mothers imploring the return whose wide-ranging work tackles issues related of their children, I remember this photograph. to social injustice, inequality and sociopolitical division. His previous projects have addressed the As a young man, I survived Gen. Augusto Rwandan genocide and immigration in the United Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Later, I traveled States, among other topics. WESSING/NEDERLANDS FOTOMUSEUM, ROTTE SEPTEMBER 1978/C. KOEN WESSING (1942-2011)/ESTELÍ, NICARAGUA. KOEN ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPH BY

124 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 SABA KHAN

“Keep Your Hands to Yourself” (“Apne Haath, helped pave the way for Pakistan’s own #MeToo Apne Paas”) (2018) movement. Today, victims are fighting back and using social media as a tool to seek justice. With the rise of the Pakistani middle class, Earlier this year, the director of the National steadily increasing numbers of women have College of Arts in Rawalpindi was removed joined the workforce. Pakistani women now after facing sexual harassment allegations. And make up roughly 22 percent of the nation’s in April, Meesha Shafi, a well-known Pakistani workers, according to the World Bank. Though actress and singer, posted a tweet claiming that number is lower than all of Pakistan’s South that a former male colleague of hers who is Asian neighbors except for Afghanistan, it a pop star and Bollywood actor had sexually nonetheless represents a dramatic change harassed her — a charge he denied. for a country in which women traditionally My artwork — a tapestry of sequins and worked in the home. beads inspired by the covers of Urdu pulp Accompanying the rise of the female worker novels — is an attempt to address the ways has been an increased awareness of sexual in which sexual assault continues to subjugate harassment on the job. The 2010 passage of Pakistani women in 2018. The tapestry shows a law criminalizing workplace harassment two pairs of “shalwar,” trousers commonly worn by Pakistani men, in the upper left and right corners. These baggy pants — and the act of untying the garment’s drawstring — have been used to symbolize dominance over women in Urdu literature and Pakistani films. A “dupatta,” the traditional scarf representing female mod- esty, drapes down toward two women, neither of whom are free from society’s patriarchal structures. The emblem in the middle of the tapestry tells the viewer to “keep your hands to yourself,” or “apne haath, apne paas” in Urdu.

Saba Khan is a visual artist whose work engages with the interplay of social class, popular culture and religion in contemporary Pakistan. She is the founder of the artist-run Murree Museum Artist’s Residency and teaches at the National College of Arts in Pakistan. SABA KHAN

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 125 HANK WILLIS THOMAS

“Freedom of Speech” (2018) graphs is arguably under greater threat “Freedom of Worship” (2018) than at any time since Rockwell pro- “Freedom From Want” (2018) duced his paintings. Now, more than “Freedom From Fear” (2018) ever, it’s worth remembering that progress is a journey, and that the road is In his 1941 State of the Union address, always under construction. President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid out his vision of a world based on “four Hank Willis Thomas is an American essential human freedoms”: freedom conceptual artist exploring the of speech, freedom of worship, freedom intersection of race, mass media and popular culture. He is the co-founder of from want and freedom from fear. Two For Freedoms, an organization dedicated years later, Norman Rockwell painted to using art to increase civic engagement a series of oils illustrating Roosevelt’s in the United States. In 2018, For principles, published in successive is- Freedoms’ 50 State Initiative produced Clockwise from left: “Freedom of Speech” (2018) sues of The Saturday Evening Post and art exhibitions, town hall events and artist-made billboards across the country “Freedom of Worship” (2018) later used to sell war bonds. to spur political debate ahead of the “Freedom From Want” (2018) I came across Rockwell’s iconic “Four midterm elections. “Freedom From Fear” (2018) Freedoms” a few years ago and was astounded by the beauty of the images and the power with which they represented the classic American values of family, faith, freedom and security. But I was also astounded by what was missing: America’s ethnic and cultural diversity. It appeared that in Rockwell’s vision, and perhaps Roo- sevelt’s, those values were reserved for white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. All other Americans — Native, Lati- no, Asian, African, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, L.G.B.T. — were expected to enjoy those freedoms in the shadows, if at all. I asked myself: What would Rockwell’s paintings look like if they were updated to reflect a more heter- ogeneous America? With the help of my friend, the pho- tographer Emily Shur, I’ve tried to answer that question. We’ve reproduced Rockwell’s paintings as photographs, both to mark the 75th anniversary of the original works and to highlight the America we believe in — a country where everyone is represented and valued, regardless of their social status, faith or ethnic background. To reflect this multiplicity, we created multiple versions of Rockwell’s paintings cast- ing a diverse range of people. The images you see here are only four of the nearly 80 photographs we produced. In 2018, the vibrant and diverse

America represented by these photo- OF FOR FREEDOMS SHUR. COURTESY HANK WILLIS THOMAS AND EMILY

126 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 VENUS WILLIAMS: A PATH TO EMPOWERMENT ‘I always tell myself that it’s O.K. to be nervous, but it’s not O.K. to let that nervousness impact my game.’ BY VENUS WILLIAMS

n a video that made the rounds on social TURNING founded. It has been at the core of so many Imedia in 2018, a 14-year-old Venus Williams POINT of her achievements, and she thinks it’s a skill tells John McKenzie, an ABC News reporter that can be taught, and continually worked on. who is interviewing her, about how confident Researchers “I feel that I owe my own success to my be- she is that she can defeat an opponent on the surveyed almost lief in myself,” she told Turning Points, “and tennis court. 2,000 American have found that confidence can be learned and “I know I can beat her,” a smiling Venus tells girls as part of developed. In fact, my own self-confidence is Mr. McKenzie. “I’m very confident.” a report for a something I work on every day, just like going Mr. McKenzie seems surprised at her answer. 2018 book, “The to the gym or training on the court.” “You say it so easily,” he tells her. “Why?” Confidence Code With this is mind, we asked Ms. Williams for “Because I believe it,” Venus replies. for Girls,” and her formula for developing and maintaining This sense of self has driven Ms. Williams found that girls’ self-confidence, particularly for women. “The all her life. Self-assuredness propelled her to confidence levels fact is, just as you can train yourself physically, dominate professional tennis; it was key to fall about 30 you can train your mind to believe in your own her being ranked the top female player in the percent between self-worth.” — Armando Arrieta world. But personal empowerment has also the ages of 8 and been essential in her efforts to promote gen- 14. A similar drop Here are three essential rules, as told to us der equality, like when she led a successful was not observed by Venus Williams: public campaign to demand that Wimbledon for boys. pay women the same amount of prize money 1. BE HONEST ABOUT as men. (When Ms. Williams won her fourth YOUR FEELINGS Wimbledon title in 2007, she became the first When something doesn’t work out the way I woman to earn exactly what the male champi- want it to, I ask myself a simple but essential on, Roger Federer, earned: $1.4 million.) question: Why? I find that this is the best way Self-confidence has also been instrumental to get to the root of the problem. in Ms. Williams’ entrepreneurial endeavors, As you work toward your goals, keep in mind among them her fashion line, EleVen, and V that you need to be honest about your feelings. Starr Interiors, the interior design firm she Rather than trying to cover up any doubts you

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 127 128

UNN ONS GLOBALAGENDA 2019 . TURNING POINTS

CREDIT: JEWEL SAMAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES might have, make sure to recognize when you sound right? Of course not. Tell yourself the are feeling unsure of yourself. Then remind opposite — and go for it. yourself that while you might not feel confident A study from Ohio State University provides right now, you remain committed to your goals, evidence that people who can see themselves committed to doing the work and committed achieving their goals are more likely to do so. to making tough decisions. Once you can visualize yourself reaching your Whatever you do, don’t take the easy way goals, create an action plan to get there. out — that only brings temporary pleasure. Remember that games are won or lost long Also, stop comparing yourself to others. before you step on the court. Similarly, jobs Thinking that other people are more successful are obtained or lost before you show up for Venus Williams, because they are smarter, prettier or taller will your first interview, and raises are secured regarded as one the only serve to undermine your own success. or denied before you talk to your manager. world’s best tennis players, has won seven Keep in mind, however, that it is extremely The key is having a path toward achieving Grand Slam titles and helpful to have someone else to talk to, wheth- your goal mapped out before you even walk four Olympic gold er that person is a coach, a mentor or simply through the door. medals. She is the someone you respect who has been successful CEO of V Starr Interiors and is living a positive life. 3. USE FAILURE and the founder of EleVen, a fashion line. When you’re being honest about your feel- TO YOUR ADVANTAGE ings, accept the fact that self-doubt is O.K. It’s Having confidence is the basis for a happy a normal human reaction. The key is not to be and balanced personal life, which in turn can driven by feelings of insecurity. In matches, I contribute to greater success in our professional always tell myself that it’s O.K. to be nervous, lives. That’s because when we’re confident, but it’s not O.K. to let that nervousness impact we are energized and focused on the future my game. rather than just putting out fires and coping I have often observed people around me with everyday problems. make clearly misguided decisions, and then And yet failure is an inevitable part of life. I’m wondered in disbelief: “Why would they do always brutally honest with myself about my such a thing?” At the time, their decisions failures, a practice that comes from being an seemed nonsensical. But I’ve come to realize athlete. In sports, defining failure is very simple: that they were basing their choices on their If you cannot correct yourself, you will lose. feelings of self-doubt. When those decisions For me, failure just means that I have to work led to regrettable outcomes, it only underscored harder. Giving up is never an option. Failure the idea that they weren’t worthy, reinforcing makes you stronger, wiser and better. My big- a negative cycle. gest failures have always been integral to my But it doesn’t have to be this way. biggest successes. We all face challenges at some point in our 2. CREATE A MAP OF THE PATH lives, but making a decision based on low YOU WILL FOLLOW TO ACHIEVE self-esteem is a short-term play that doesn’t YOUR GOALS allow us to flourish in the long term and reach You deserve success, happiness and the chance our full potential. The more we learn to make Left: Venus Williams to live your dreams. decisions based on self-confidence the more watches a young tennis If believing all that seems difficult, try telling we are empowered to keep striving for our player return a shot at a youth clinic in yourself this: “I deserve the worst things in life. dreams. To me, that’s the true definition of Washington in 2011. I deserve failure and unhappiness.” Does this success.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 129 THE COWARDLY FACE OF AUTHORITARIANISM The transition from democracy to a cult of personality starts with a leader who lies all the time. BY TIMOTHY SNYDER

irst we see the face. The face of America’s TURNING FDonald Trump, or Hungary’s Viktor Orban, POINT or Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the face of men who wish to China removes transform democracies into personality cults. presidential term The face is the oldest mark of leadership, limits. the mark that works for clan or tribe. If we see only the face, we are not thinking about policies or politics; instead, we are accepting the new regime and its rules. However, a democracy is about the people, not a single mythicized person. A souvenir plate with People need truth, which a cult of personal- an image of Chinese ity destroys. Theories of democracy, from the President Xi Jinping ancient Greeks through the Enlightenment to behind a statue of Mao today, take for granted that the world around us Zedong at a store in yields to understanding. We pursue the facts Beijing. The Communist Party has scrapped alongside our fellow citizens. But in a cult of the two-term limit for personality, truth is replaced by belief, and we presidents, giving Mr. believe what the leader wishes us to believe. Xi a clear path to rule The face replaces the mind. China for life. GREG BAKER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -— GETTY IMAGES, MAXIM BABENKO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR THE NEW YORK BABENKO MAXIM FRANCE-PRESSE -— GETTY IMAGES, GREG BAKER/AGENCE

130 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 A waiter in a café near the Mamayev Kurgan memorial to the Battle of Stalingrad in Volgograd, Russia.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 131 A supporter of President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in August.

The transition from democracy to personality The authoritarians of today tell medium-size cult begins with a leader who is willing to lie lies. These refer only superficially to experienc- all the time, in order to discredit the truth as es; they draw us deep into a cave of emotion. such. The transition is complete when people If we believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim can no longer distinguish between truth and born in Africa (an American lie with Russian feeling. support), or that Hillary Clinton is a pedophile The cult of personality functions the same pimp (a Russian lie with American support), everywhere; it rests on the inaccurate notion we are not actually thinking; we are giving that the face somehow represents the nation. way to sexual and physical fear. Cults of personality make us feel rather than These medium-size lies are not quite the big think. In particular, they make us feel that the lies of the totalitarians, although Mr. Orban’s first question of politics is “Who are we, and attacks on George Soros as the leader of a who are they?” rather than “What is the world Jewish conspiracy come rather close. They are, like, and what can we do about it?” Once we however, big enough that they help to disable accept that politics is about “us and them,” the factual world. Once we accept these lies, we feel like we know who “we” are, since we we open ourselves up to believing a whole feel that we know who “they” are. In fact, we raft of other untruths, or at least suspect that know nothing, since we have accepted fear and there are other, vaster conspiracies. anxiety — animal emotions — as the basis of The face of the leader becomes, as a result, politics. We have been played. a flag, an arbitrary marker of “us” and “them.”

Right: Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stand in front of a screen displaying his portrait during a rally in Ankara in 2016, shortly after a failed coup attempt.

A demonstrator in Mexico City with an image of the Argentine- born revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara during a march on Oct. 2 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco student

massacre. FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES, TIMES, RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AGENCE WINTER/THE NEW YORK DAMON FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES ADEM ALTAN/AGENCE

132 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, best known for his books “Bloodlands” and “On Tyranny.” His most recent book is “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.”

The internet and social media are helping us It cannot reproduce itself. The cult of person- to see politics in this binary way. We imagine ality is the worship of something temporary. that we make choices as we sit in front of our It is thus confusion and, at bottom, cowardice: computers, but the choices are, in fact, framed The leader cannot contemplate the fact that for us by algorithms that learn what will keep he will die and be replaced, and citizens abet us online. Our online activity teaches machines the illusion by forgetting that they share re- that the most effective stimuli are negative: fear sponsibility for the future. and anxiety. As social media becomes political The cult of personality blunts the ability to instruction, we prime ourselves for politicians keep a country going. When we accept a cult of who reproduce the same binary: What makes personality, we are not only yielding our right us afraid and what makes us feel secure? Who to choose leaders but also dulling the skills and are they and who are we? weakening the institutions that would allow A cult of personality used to require monu- us to do so in the future. As we move away ments; now it requires memes. Social media from democracy, we forget its purpose: to give consumes the public imagination like the giant us all a future. A cult of personality says that statues of tyrants from former times consumed one person is always right, so after his death public space. But as those monuments remind comes chaos. us, tyrants always die. The empty heterosexual Democracy says that we all make mistakes, posturing, the shirtless photo ops, the misogy- but that we get a chance, every so often, to ny and indifference to the female experience, correct ourselves. Democracy is the courageous the anti-gay campaigns, are designed to hide way to have a country. A cult of personality is one basic fact: A cult of personality is sterile. a cowardly way of destroying one.

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 133 THE BIG PHISH We have long ago come to terms with the trade-off that to participate in social media, we must first give up our privacy. We sacrifice vital parts of our personal data so that we may amplify our voice, stroke our ego and connect with a virtual tribe. Turning Points asked the writer MAGGIE SHEN KING to explore a data-driven dystopia, and she responded with a piece of flash fiction.

ofie could not understand why the bidding TURNING Sstopped a week ago. Her database of 87 POINT million Facebook records was the weapon of the century. Its cache of personal information Cambridge made spear phishing child’s play. A pre-emp- Analytica, a tive bid should have ended her auction before political data firm, it even began. harvested private She checked her countdown clock — 5 min- information from utes 39 seconds. Auctions were, of course, all more than 87 about the last seconds. She hadn’t a doubt million Facebook she’d lured all the right players to her party, profiles without so why was the bid stuck at half of where it the social should be? network’s alerting Her stomach would not stop churning. She users. pinched her wrist and held her breath. These records were hers. She was the one smart enough to grab them before Cambridge Analytica blew up and kicked her to the curb. What she was doing was no different than what her employer had done to Facebook and what Facebook had done to their users. And had those users not valued the serendipitous reconnections with high school boyfriends, the ego strokes from bragging about their expen- her name to a boatload of student loans and sive vacations and their little child prodigies declared independence. But after Cambridge and a public forum in which to harangue their Analytica gave her the boot without so much elected officials, they would not have put their as a kind word or her last paycheck, she finally private information out there. understood that money bought self-respect. Facebook users understood that they had Without self-respect, she was nothing. to give away a part of themselves for easy She returned to her auction site on the dark connections and the much-coveted limelight. web. Still no action. Her reserve price had sur- Sofie tore off a hangnail with her teeth. She faced the four whales. Would she be showing had become her father. She’d thumbed her nose weakness or, worse, desperation sending them at his poker dens and bookie operation, signed a reminder? No, she was in charge, and she

134 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 would demonstrate that with a final prod, a Salâam alaikum. Our auction ends in 4 min- do-it-or-lose-forever stick-in-the-eye. Above all utes. Just between us, the Chinese are coming else, her bidders could not abide losing. Nor in with a billion at the close. I’d rather you win could they afford to. AND stick it to the American infidels by paying She began with Saeed, her Iranian contact. me with their hostage ransom money. Are you Micro-targeted spear phishing would be much going to let their crippling sanctions and the more potent than the SQL injection and DDoS Israeli destruction of your priceless centrifuges attacks they had used to cripple American go unanswered? banking websites. Her database would provide a rash of entry points for their malware She waited for a reply, but heard just the

KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS KACPER to take down Saudi oil fields. drumming of her own heart. She moved on

TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 135 to Pak, her North Korean connection. Their Reconnaissance General Bureau was at least 5,000 hackers strong and adept at brute force cyberattacks. Their email hack of Sony Pictures for the lampooning of their supreme leader had devastated the company. With Sofie’s database, they could take down more financial institutions and military agencies, keep themselves on the world stage and finance their feeble economy at the same time.

Billion-dollar bid just came in from your neighbor. Show your rivals you are no laughing stock. Long live North Korean strength, unpredictability and wily intelligence!

Her laptop pinged. She pumped her fist: Her two messages were just opened. Three minutes and counting. Sofie forged Watching her clock tick down, Sofie dug the ahead and considered how best to rile Misha. tip of her father’s lucky Montblanc — the one He represented a coalition that included the Rus- he reserved for his second set of books — into sian government, wealthy oligarchs and criminal her thigh. She smiled picturing him tossing gangs. Should she emphasize the financial gain his apartment for it and cursing her. possible with the pairing of her database and the At 00:30, her message box began to ding. massive storehouse of credit card information She was right. Auctions happened in the last that their mafia had already amassed? The op- seconds. Her body went limp with relief. portunity to disrupt Western military, electrical and banking infrastructures? The ability to mis- $525 million final bid, $530 million, $505 inform, divide and reshape Western opinions? million and $509 million. She went for the highest stake. The bastards were colluding. Not only did Auction for the weapon of the cen- they disregard her billion-dollar threat, their tury is ending. The Chinese have sent in a kill bids were obscenely close. Someone had un- bid. I’m obligated to take it, but hey, I make locked the multilayer state-of-the-art securi- the rules. I’d prefer my database be used to ty on her site and contacted their rivals. Of change elections and blackmail hypocritical, course they did. She was dealing with the best holier-than-thou American politicians. And hackers in the world. Sofie’s head pounded Maggie Shen King is smarmy British toadies. And German rats. You with rage. author of “An Excess have 90 seconds to win this. She should invalidate the auction and start Male,” published by Harper Voyager in over. The thought depressed her. It had tak- 2017. With less than two minutes left, she consid- en her nearly a year to disguise her identity, ered ignoring Lao Da. The Chinese had ticked set up her site, get the word out, vet all the her off with two insultingly low “fill-or-kill” players and create an airtight verification bids and then threatened to walk away. They process. Moreover, portions of her data were returned each time though, unabashed. They time-sensitive. had more resources than all of the other bidders By colluding, they would all get her da- combined and were above spear phishing for tabase, so why shouldn’t they each pay her petty gains. By combining Sofie’s database price? They had invalidated the auction. A new with the 22 million U.S. Office of Personnel game was in play. Management files in their possession, they A corner of her lip crooked upward as Sofie could steal intellectual properties and military crafted her message. She congratulated each secrets at will for their industrial and state- player for winning the auction at their submit- owned operations. ted bid and enclosed an OAuth token — good for one minute only — that would unlock the The Russians have come to play with a cool encryption keys to her database upon the trans- billion. Can you do better??? You have 30 sec- fer of funds. One way or another, she would

onds to enter your final bid. get her billion dollars. FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES LEON NEAL/AGENCE

136 TURNING POINTS . GLOBAL AGENDA 2019 It’s not just our World Business Class seats that set us apart

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