Malaysia shows year-on-year improvement on FSI 2021, not a failed state - Researchers

KUALA LUMPUR: A team of researchers has said that Malaysia is far from being a "failed state" as labelled by certain quarters.

EMIR Research think-tank researchers Dr Rais Hussin and Jamari Mohtar, in their opinion piece published today, said Malaysia is ranked in 123rd position from 179 countries in this year's Fragile States Index (FSI 2021), a year-on-year improvement of 0.7 points.

They said political elites in the country should refrain from labelling the government as a failed government just for the mere purpose of politicking.

Both researchers highlighted that Malaysia obtained a total score of 56.9 points, in contrast to Yemen as the most fragile state at the top position with 111.7 points.

Finland, at the bottom of the list and being the least fragile state for 2021, has 16.2 points.

The FSI, published by US-based non-profit organisation, Fund for Peace, is based on four main indicators and 12 sub indicators, and a score of one to 10 points is given for each indicator, with one being the best and 10 the worst.

The indicators are cohesion (security apparatus, factionalised elites and group grievance); economic (economic decline, uneven development, and human flight and brain drain); political (state legitimacy, public services, and human rights and rule of law) as well as social and cross-cutting indicators (demographic pressure, refugees and internally displaced persons, and external intervention).

According to Rais and Jamari, Malaysia scored the lowest three indicators in external intervention with 2.6 points, refugees and internally displaced persons (three points) and economic decline (3.3 points) while the three highest are factionalised elites and human rights, each scoring 6.8 points, and state legitimacy (6.3 points).

They also noted that Malaysia is ranked eighth out of the 10 ASEAN countries.

-- BERNAMA