About

 Lex est ratio summa, insita in natura, quae iubet ea quae facienda sunt, prohibetque contraria


M. Tullius Cicero; De Legibus I:XVIII



Please direct inquiries and comments to gemilangjournal@tutanota.com. Ideally, please additionally leave an end-to-end encrypted alternate method of contact (e.g. Telegram, Signal). 



GENERAL DISCLAIMER: The views expressed within The Gemilang Journal do not represent advice, inducement, or instruction of any sort to any party or parties whatsoever. The views expressed within The Gemilang Journal do not and should not be read to question the current legal legitimacy of any and all provisions within the Federal Constitution of Malaysia as currently constituted; or indeed of any Act of Parliament, or State or local regulation or legislation currently in force. The views expressed within The Gemilang Journal explicitly do not and should not be read to advocate, support, or condone any amendment to the legal position of the Constitutional Monarchy, or of the institution of the Malay Rulers, or the Conference of Rulers. 


All reasonable efforts have been made to ensure information and facts as recorded herein are accurate as at time of writing. Where available, appropriate, and relevant; evidence of assertions are provided as hyperlinks within articles. Should any such hyperlink be no longer relevant or functional, please reach out to us with details at the email address above. 



Popular posts from this blog

Anywhere but Putrajaya – Outsider Thoughts from the Malay Heartland

Image
 Prelude I recently went to Johor – the core of the largest distinctly Malay polity in history: the Sultanate of Johor-Riau; the home of the modern Malay language, the heartland of the grand old party of Malayan and now Malaysian politics, UMNO – at the invitation of a dear old friend of mine. We have known each other for perhaps twenty years now, since we were small boys in khaki shorts. He is a riotous laugh, an insightful thinker, and a talented musician.   He also happens to be an UMNO princeling: his father was a minister and – up until the last election – an MP holding the family seat that his grandfather had held since its conception. His grandfather in turn was a titanic figure in the party and in national politics at large during the Hussein Onn and first Mahathir administrations, a minister whose remit stretched far beyond Putrajaya into the everyday lives of citizens around the country. Whilst the differences in our assumed politics might be an expanse, this h...
Read more

The Many Failures of Malay(sian) Nationalism – Part 1

Image
    ‘A nation is the same people living in the same place.’ ‘By God, then,’ says Ned, laughing, ‘If that’s so I’m a nation for I’m living in the same place for the same five years. So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck out of it: ‘-Or also living in different places.’ Ulysses, by James Joyce   Nationalism in the abstract is notoriously tricky to define: a cursory reference to Anderson’s seminal “ Imagined Communities ” should be sufficient prompting for the interested reader to investigate further – the nation is a social construct limited to a certain in-group, in which members of that in-group recognise their distinctiveness (which is in turn recognised by other groups) on the basis of shared sociocultural practices and behaviours. That thesis is broadly convincing insofar as it provides a basis for taxonomy and categorisation; but in the service of inclusivity and general application may not necessarily examine the purpo...
Read more

Thoughts concerning the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II

Image
  In an entirely out-of-character move for me, the death of Her Late Majesty has provoked me to put thoughts down in public using social media. As both a monarchist and – as I often like to say – a “card-carrying Conservative”; it was hardly surprising to me that I would find a lot of the reaction to the tragic but ultimately not unforeseen news distasteful, even as I knew the basic lines of disagreement that would likely arise between myself and less anachronistically-minded friends. I realise that a lecture-slash-rant on constitutional monarchy is unlikely to be popular or particularly well-viewed. I also realise that, as I have been told and have myself said a number of times today, I am unlikely to change your mind; or vice versa; if you have already decided in principle that monarchism and the whole royal kitchen sink is a regressive and on-the-whole negative institution. I hope only to give an honest and reasonable account of what I find important and effective about monarchy...
Read more