A Defining Commentator On Malaysian: Din Merican (1939-2026

 A Defining Commentator On Malaysiana:  Din Merican (1939-2026)

M. Bakri Musa

April 12, 2026

I was saddened to hear of the death of my dear old friend and fellow frequent commentator on affairs Malaysiana, Din Merican. How appropriate to hear of the news through social media as Din was more well known for his popular blog “The Malaysian DJ Blogger.” Nonetheless the mainstream media too including the establishment The New Strait Timescarried the news. 

It was only a few months ago that we were chatting on our cell phones. Although he had a stroke a few years earlier, we had quite an extended conversation. Except for the occasional slight slurring and his complaining of his cell phone’s bewildering settings (no surprise there for us in the senior years with our ever less dexterous fingers), we had no difficulty communicating. Din was sharp, lucid, and very much engaged on local political developments, his passion and what made our previously separate paths meet.

My first encounter with Din was, not surprisingly, through his written words. His “Letter to the Editor” in the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review was critical of my piece, “Malaysia’s Economic Challenge” (April 2, 1998), published earlier in its Fifth Column. He thought I was being unfair to the Mahathir Administration and the man himself as Malaysia was then still suffering from and desperately trying to recover from the debilitating 1997 Asian Economic Crisis.

Through many subsequent e-mail exchanges, we discovered that our initial disagreement was less in kind, more in degree. That led to our many joint commentaries. Our first was a condemnation of the neanderthal-like police raid by the new Abdullah Administration on the then nascent on-line news portal Malaysiakini.com (“What Has The Malaysiakini Raid Wrought,” Feb 27, 2003, Malaysiakini.com). That was also an early and prescient observation on Abdullah’s crude and inept leadership. He was subsequently forced out by the man who had put him (Abdullah) there – Mahathir.

Din was once interrogated by the Special Branch, also during the Abdullah years. Din was unfazed. Fortunately, nothing happened to him.

I am grateful to Din for reposting many of my commentaries on his blog. He was with the University of Malaya’s Asia-Europe Institute and was instrumental in having my first book, The Malay Dilemma Revisited:  Race Dynamics In Modern Malaysia published locally, albeit clandestinely in 2000. Nonetheless that led to an invitation for me to give a lecture on campus. This was later rescinded by the campus administration, to the severe embarrassment of the senior professor who had initiated it.

Din was a few years older than me. We were among the lucky few to have benefited from or taken advantage of the superior Western education afforded by the colonial British. Din’s mother, a nurse, had worked in Mahathir’s private medical practice and saw the value of modern education as provided by the secular colonials. For me, it was the English lecturers at the old Sultan Idris Teachers College Tanjung Malim and Malay Women Teachers College Melaka who had imparted those same values on my parents. It never occurred for us, then or now, to question the colonials’ motives. We simply grabbed the opportunities given.

Din attended the elite Penang Free School and graduated from the University of Malaya at a time when that institution aspired to be a tropical Oxbridge and had yet to be infested with zealot nationalists. He later did his MBA at George Washington. Through that he captained many a government-linked corporation at a time when such endeavors were not associated with grand larceny. 

I wonder where Malaysia and Malays specifically would be today had the British at the time also built a Terengganu or Kelantan Free School. Similarly, where would Malays be today had there been a string of Anglo-Malay Schools instead back then in our small towns. A thought to ponder in the current angst on our education system.

Din had a renewed lease on life during his retirement when he was briefly associated with the new Business School at the University of Cambodia. He was intellectually invigorated by the many bright young Cambodians he was privileged to guide. Alas that blissful life was rudely interrupted when he had a stroke. Third World universities are not kind to their staff when they are incapacitated. 

Karen and I had the immense pleasure of meeting Din and his then wife Kamsiah when they visited California in July 2011. Even though our time together was only for a day, it etched a deep memory in us. To me it was as if I had met a long-lost soul mate.

Din, thank you for sharing your views and being part of my intellectual life. And thank you for your kind and very much-needed assurances that I am not out there in the belukar (swamps) with my ideas. Rest in peace my dear friend and may Allah place you among His Most Blessed. 

Excerpt from my Hadith, Qur’an, and Hikayat: Exercises In Critical Thinking will resume next week.