Wong Chin Huat

Who is Wong Chin Huat?

Wong Chin Huat is a Malaysian political scientist, a political activist and a columnist.

A fellow at Penang Institute, a think tank linked to the Penang State Government, he earned his PhD from University of Essex, UK on a thesis on electoral system and party politics in West Malaysia between 1982 and 2004 at the University of Essex. He was a Chevening scholar. He obtained a Bachelor of Economics degree from University of Malaya in 1996 and a MA degree in Industrial and Organisational Psychology from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2000. Before joining Penang Institute, he taught journalism at Monash University Sunway Campus for six years.

He has been an activist for various causes from media freedom, electoral reform, freedom of assembly to environmental protection. He is most known for his role as a leader in the electoral reform movement, Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections and later Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections 2.0. He was arrested three times for the cause. Beginning 2011, he has also assisted in green movements in Kuantan, Raub and Pengerang. In late 2011, he helped form a new NGO called KillTheBill which organised a series of creative protests during weekends for two months to oppose the restrictive Peace Assembly Bill. Earlier in 2001, he played a key role in organising a boycott campaign of writers against the takeover of Nanyang Press by a ruling party MCA orchestrated by Nanyang's rival Sin Chew Group. The group of writers eventually formed the Writer Alliance for Media Independence and Wong took over the chairmanship in 2006. His first NGO work was as the Executive Secretary of the Malaysian Chinese Organisation Election Appeal Committee, a lobby which advocated for broad institutional and policy reform and soon earned the wrath of the Mahathir Government.