Datuk Nur Jazlan is a two-term Member of Parliament for Pulai, Johor. He is also the Barisan Nasional and UMNO chief for the Pulai constituency. He is a chartered accountant by training.
Idlan Rabihah Zakaria is a football-mad academic who lives in Colchester with five bookshelves and a road bike. She is interested in the behavioural aspects of accounting, finance, and capital markets, specialising in corporate governance. In her spare time she also enjoys amateur photography and bad British comedy. To pay the bills she utilises her doctorate in accounting and finance by teaching unsuspecting undergraduates (and the odd postgraduate or three) that very little about accounting is related to numbers.
John Lee ialah seorang pelajar dan penulis. Dia sedang melanjutkan pelajarannya di Amerika Syarikat, tetapi dalam masa lapangnya mengikuti isu semasa di tanah air. Walaupun tidak begitu fasih dalam Bahasa Malaysia, dia percaya bahasa jiwa bangsa. Alangkah baiknya masyarakat begitu majmuk, biarlah dari segi bahasa ataupun bangsa.
Julian C.H. Lee is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University's campus in Malaysia. He is editor of the column Ini Budaya Kita the magazine Off The Edge. He is also a member of the Women's Candidacy Initiative, a civil society group that aims to raise women's representation in Malaysian Parliament. His scholarly articles have appeared in, amongst other places, Anthropological Forum, Anthropology Today, and The Round Table.
Dr. K. J. John is the Executive Director of OHMSI, a civil society organization that began the National Congress on Integrity. He also is Director of the Malaysian Institute of Development and Asian Studies or MiDAS at the University College Sedaya International in Cheras. He has retired from public service after more than 30 years.
Lim Ming Kuok is a product of Malaysian, Japanese, and American education. A final year PhD. Candidate at the Pennsylvania State University (U.S) in the field of Mass Communication, he is deeply interested in the relationship between media, society, and democracy. Currently, he is researching on the connection between blogging and democracy, using Malaysia as a case study. He recently concluded a series of interviews with prominent bloggers, academicians, and media practitioners in the country on the same topic.
Mavis Puthucheary was formerly associate professor in the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya. Since retiring, she has continued to research and write about politics in Malaysia, particularly on the issue of the 'social contract'. In 2005, she edited a book with Norani Othman on Elections and Politics in Malaysia.
Nizam Bashir runs a legal practice in Malacca, where he lives with his wife and four kids. He once aspired to be an anonymous blogger, but soon realized that registering his blog under www.nizambashir.com wasn't the smartest way of realizing his aspirations. In his spare time, he follows the English Premier League, supporting every other football club that Man United plays against.
Nursufya Yacob is a student who is soon to graduate with a degree in Accounting from Victoria University of Wellington. She is striving to understand how the world works. Her dream is to solve the awful inequities present in the world today, like the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
Ong Kian Ming is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Duke University. His thesis investigates how authoritarian regimes manage to stay in power despite (or because of?) holding regular elections and how they might fall out of power. He used to be a management consultant but decided that political research was more interesting.
Ooi Kee Beng The writer is a Fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. His latest books include Lost in Transition: Malaysia under Abdullah (SIRD & ISEAS 2008) and The Reluctant Politician: Tun Dr Ismail and His Time (ISEAS 2006). The latter won an Excellence Award in the category "Best Writing Published in Book Form, about Any Aspect of Asia (non-fiction)" at the Asian Publishing Awards ceremony held in Singapore on 15 July 2008.
The Worried Student is a student from a certain local university that is headed by certain a man with a famous moustache. He tends to think too much until he turns to depression and then buys self-help books. He also secretly wishes that his writing would attract the opposite sex. Previously, his letter on a similar theme appeared on The People's Parliament
Tricia Yeoh is the Director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies. Her work involves research and analysis in the areas of socioeconomic policy, national unity and governance. She writes and speaks regularly on the above subjects and is particularly passionate about social and economic justice. She believes in a Malaysia that transcends racial politics. In her (very little) free time, she involves herself in "Revolution of Hope Malaysia" and fantasizes about playing in a band.
Z. A. Samad once thought that becoming a 30-something would bring on all kinds of epiphanies. She was horribly surprised to find that these epiphanies came with questions bigger than she had imagined. She often wishes she took law instead of engineering, worked in finance instead of IT, and still weighed 54 kilograms. In her spare time, she is an interested observer in the unfolding of the Malaysian dream. Those school days spent scouring through LKS' "Malaysia: Crisis of Identity" and MM's "Malay Dilemma" describes her attempt of making herself her own social experiment, as she shifts gear from 'outcast' to 'mainstream'.
Zubin Rada Krishnan returned to Malaysia in 2004 after graduating from university. He has spent most of his time since working as a management consultant. Despite what one may infer from his name, he is actually three-quarter squatter and only one quarter of him would be able to 'balik India' should anyone ask him to do so. Zubin came back to his Motherland hoping that one day the first question asked of him will not be, "What are you?"
