The End of the Nineteen-Nineties

The End of the Nineteen-Nineties places the decade within the context of our pre-colonial and post-colonial history, underscoring that brief, bright spark of optimism in the Malaysian journey. It also mourns the apparent collapse of the incipient Bangsa Malaysia ideal, which has since given way to ethnocentric silos. In weaving together personal, national and global events to contextualize and understand tensions that exist within Malaysian society, the author asks: Do we still have a chance?

When Malaysia won the Thomas Cup in 1992, the whole nation celebrated as one. And for most of that decade, we did seem to have reasons to celebrate: We had a national car, a national goal in the form of Wawasan 2020, and the future seemed as bright as KLCC lights. The economist Hafiz Noor Shams belongs to that generation that sang the Wawasan 2020 song in school assemblies. And he asks: What has happened to us since then?