MICHAEL BLEBY: Moderate to the extreme: Malaysia’s newest leader is an old contender

It’s a tough time to be a political moderate. Ask Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s long-term political bridesmaid who eventually got his chance at the top job in November.

Anwar was deputy to former prime minister Mahathir Mohammad, but was sacked in 1998 and then jailed for 11 years on charges that were later overturned.

A four-day stand-off followed this year’s national election before Malaysia’s king, with eight other regional sultans, intervened to invite Anwar, head of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, to form a government. This gave the 75-year-old a result he’d chased for 24 years.

Significantly, voters rejected Mahathir, Anwar’s leader-turned-nemesis, a veteran politician who dominated post-independence Malaysia, overseeing wealth redistribution towards ethnic Malays from the Chinese and Indian population. 

These were the policies that provided a model for SA’s black economic empowerment, but they failed to get Mahathir re-elected this time round. He did not even make the required 12.5% of votes required for candidates to get back their security deposits.

The sidelining of Mahathir, this time heading a new Malay-based party, has not ended the biggest challenge faced by Anwar, a leader who has long taken a more inclusive stance in the ethnically diverse country. The 97-year-old Mahathir’s star had faded long before the election and the poll just confirmed it.

The bigger task for Anwar is to hold together a country that has never been united ethnically, and balance its competing demands in an economy hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest poll has made that task even harder through the rise of a pro-Islamic party that made great strides among ethnic Malays, who account for 62% of the country’s 33-million people.

Malaysia’s dilemma is a situation people in many postcolonial countries will understand — the decades-long challenge to forge equitable and fair economic and political structures that suit their needs and times.

The first big change happened in 2018 when the Barisan Nasional coalition lost power under leader and then prime minister Najib Razak. The coalition had ruled the country for six decades from independence, and was dominated by the United Malay National Organisation (Umno), the Malay-focused party in which Mahathir and Anwar grew up, played leadership roles and then left.

Razak was jailed for 12 years earlier this year for abuse of power, criminal breach of trust and money laundering in relation to the 1MDB  development fund he set up after becoming prime minister in 2009, and from which investigators alleged at least $4.5bn was stolen. Since then Malaysia has been in a state of constant political instability, with Anwar the fourth prime minister in as many years.

Mahathir, who quit Umno to challenge Razak successfully in 2018 under the newly formed PH, resigned less than two years later after ally Muhyiddin Yassin defected, joining Umno and being named prime minister by the king. Muhyiddin’s government lasted only until 2021, when he resigned. The king then appointed Ismail Sabri Yakoob prime minister.

Now, in a cobbled-together coalition that includes a much-reduced Umno with his own People’s Justice Party, Anwar’s room to move is limited. Despite being committed to Malaysia’s diverse society, in which ethnic Chinese make up about 20% and Indians more than 6% of the population, he will have to focus on the task of holding government together in the short term.

He also has to manage a rising wave of political Islam, which has won the votes of disaffected Malays. Islamist party PAS became the single biggest bloc of votes in parliament in November’s election, taking it from 18 seats to 49. And it is outside Anwar’s governing coalition.  

He has only a short time to prove he can hold things together. The next referendum on his leadership will come next year, with regional elections due in six of Malaysia’s 13 states. “The window of opportunity is about six to eight months,” says James Chin, professor of Asian Studies at the University of Tasmania. “Between now and then he’s got to prove to the Malay people that he’s not going to take away their special rights.”

That success is in large part out of his hands. Trade-dependent Malaysia, which imports more than half of its food needs, has suffered from a slump in the value of the ringgit, and inflation is high. GDP is picking up though, and unemployment has come off its pandemic high.

Anwar’s longer-term goal hinges on this continuing. “It will depend on how fast the economy can recover,” says Chin. “If it can recover fast, the case for a more inclusive Malaysia will be much easier to make.”

• Bleby is a senior reporter with The Australian Financial Review, based in Melbourne.