This book started off as a one-day workshop, Fifty years of Malaysia: Federalism Revisited, hosted by the Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALS), Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, on 27 September, 2013. Participants included Prof Andrew J Harding, Prof James Chin, Mr Ang Hean Leng, Dr Denison Jayasooria, Dr Regina Lim, Assoc Prof Khairil Azmin Mokhtar, Tan Sri Datuk Simon Sipaun, Dr Wong Chin Huat, Asst Prof Michael Dowdle, Asst Prof Jaclyn Neo, Assoc Prof Victor Ramraj, Prof Kevin Tan, Assoc Prof Bridget Welsh, Mr Ranen Bhattacharyya, Dr Jason Bonin, Prof Irene Calboli, Asst Prof Tracey Chan, Mr Chan Choon Ann, Ms Evelyn Chua, Dr Melissa Crouch, Ms Sumithra Dhanarajan, Mr Mike Grainger, Mr Ryan Hardin, Ms Hu Xianyuan, Dr Victor Kattan, Ms Ma Yulin, Ms Gabriela Marti, Mr Diego G Mejía-Lemos, Dr Thi Hoang Minh, Mr Fairul Reeza Mohd Rosli, Ms Lina Soo, Mr Teo Lee Ken, and Dean V.T. Thamilmaran.
The editors then selected papers from the workshop for this collection and authors were asked to revise their papers for publication. At this stage it was felt that a paper on federal-state issues post 2008 was needed and Rasyikah Md Khalid, Faridah Jalil and Mazlin Bin Mokhtar were asked to contribute their paper on the Selangor water issue, which was delivered at a Young Scholars’ Workshop at NUS in December 2013. We also felt that we should have an interview section and Assoc Prof Bridget Welsh kindly volunteered to interview Tan Sri Simon Sipaun and Dato Dr Peter Mooney.
We would like to record our appreciation to all those who took part in the workshop and the support staff, especially CALS Manager Ms Regana Mydin, who did a wonderful job in putting it all together. We would also especially like to thank Bridget Welsh who did the interviews in a very short time frame.
James Chin would like to thank the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and Monash University for institutional support during the project. This book project was especially memorable given that his third daughter, Catrina, was born the same week the manuscript was handed to the publisher!
The editors and publisher regret that in the first printing of this book the interview with Dato Dr Peter Mooney appeared with some errors. In particular the interview identified Dato Dr Peter Mooney incorrectly as ‘Tan Sri Sir Peter Mooney’. These errors have been corrected in this ebook edition.
ANDREW HARDING (Singapore)
JAMES CHIN (Kuala Lumpur)
July 2014