REFORMING FROM THE RIM IN:

The changing face of Malaysian politics: Recently the daughter of a former prime minister of Malaysia compared the fate of Muslim women to black South Africans under apartheid. And senior police officers received a public dressing-down by their chief for a lack of awareness of human rights. But Jonathan Kent is keen to put on record that, behind the headlines, lurks another, different, Malaysia. (Jonathan Kent, 3/26/06, BBC)

This kopitiam is the favourite of Lim Kean Chye. The doyen of Penang lawyers, 86-years-old and sharp as a pin.

I ask him what has changed here during his lifetime.

"Nothing," he says. And of course it has not.

The noodles are the same, the local coffee, the chatter as people meet friends and eat.

But then he tells me of the old days when doors were left unlocked, bullock carts were parked on Northam Road and there was always a free cup of tea for the rickshaw pullers.

There is a nation of quiet Malaysians out there.

Recently I recorded five from very different ethnic, religious and political backgrounds debating police reform, something I think they may have been too scared to do under the old premier, Mahathir Mohamad.

But these last two years the quiet Malaysians have started to speak up.

And though the braying benches of parliamentarians who call one another monkeys or racists warn that public debate will lead to race war, disorder and strife, the Malaysians I meet can thrash out the issues and get along with one another just fine.

And with a quiet Malaysian like Abdullah Badawi at the helm perhaps their time has come.

And with a quiet Malaysian like Abdullah Badawi at the helm perhaps their time has come.
MP3