Keeping it together: While some feel the pace of reform under Anwar’s administration is too slow, the reality is that getting anything done with a coalition government is not easy or quick anywhere in the world. — Filepic/The Star

THE Anwar administration is midway into its five-year term and one of the strongest criticisms it faces is that reforms are slow. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s opponents have even gone so far as to say that reforms are dead.

The reality of many Opposition leaders anywhere is that when they get into government, they find out one major truth: change cannot happen overnight.

It is even more difficult when it is a coalition government.

In the case of Malaysia’s unity government, it involves partners who had fought each other in the elections. Anwar’s party, PKR, does not even hold the largest number of seats in Parliament.

It may not be acceptable to his hardcore supporters but the inevitability is that expectations must be grounded. Anwar does not have the kind of all-powerful authority to issue executive orders with a stroke of the pen like US President Donald Trump does.

Over two years into his administration, while key reforms have been initiated, the pace and scope of change have led many to call for a more realistic lens through which to view the progress of his legacy.

Anwar had positioned himself as a reformist leader committed to restoring trust in governance, rebuilding the economy, and steering Malaysia towards a more equitable and transparent future.

He has had to make unpopular economic overhauls like targeted subsidy reforms and, most recently, broadening the sales and service tax (SST).

Anwar’s administration has focused heavily on fiscal discipline. The 2025 federal budget – amounting to RM421bil – is the largest in Malaysia’s history, with a growth target of 4.5% to 5.5% for the year.

Among the key reforms are the rationalisation of blanket subsidies and a shift towards targeted assistance for lower-income groups, and removing subsidies for the wealthy and foreign nationals. Minimum wage has been increased by 13% to RM1,700 to keep pace with inflation and cost of living.

Malaysians, including the rich, are so used to subsidised items like petrol that anything that is taken away can only lead to resentment.

Our petrol is the cheapest in the region, if not in the world, and while wages are not high, the cost of living is relatively low.

Unfortunately, no thanks to debt-funded excess spending accumulated over the last 28 years of budget deficits, RM16 out of every RM100 that the Federal Government earns goes to interest payments.

Anwar has a serious legacy issue. If he does nothing now – just to be popular – the coming generations will have to pay even more and suffer.

The latest moves, while fiscally responsible, have raised public anxiety amid rising prices and a weakening ringgit, highlighting the delicate balance between reform and public sentiment.

Let’s recap what other reforms the unity government has carried out since he became PM in November 2022.

Anwar pledged to strengthen Malaysia’s democratic institutions, and several early steps have been taken:

> The Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023 was passed, giving judges discretion in sentencing.

> Preliminary efforts to separate the roles of the Attorney General and Public Prosecutor are underway, with policy papers and studies being developed.

> A draft Political Financing Act has been introduced, aimed at curbing money politics and increasing transparency in campaign funding.

However, critics still argue progress is slow, and recent high-profile corruption court cases ending in DNAA (discharge not amounting to acquittal) have reignited concerns over the integrity and independence of the Judiciary.

It’s a bit oxymoronic: the public expects the PM not to interfere in the Judiciary but they also want him to tell the courts to keep unpopular politicians linked to corruption in jail.

Anwar himself has lost a civil suit brought against him by Yusoff Rawther, a former aide who alleged that the PKR leader sexually assaulted him at the party president’s Segambut, Kuala Lumpur, home in 2018.

The Federal Court also ruled recently that the Selangor fatwa does not apply to companies such as Sisters in Islam Forum, and that the state-level decree cannot direct federal agencies to block social media accounts.

In a step towards strengthening media freedom, the government introduced a new Media Council Act and journalism ethics code.

While Malaysia’s press freedom ranking dipped in 2024, it has since gone up by 19 places to 88th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index 2025 released by Reporters Without Borders last month.

For a journalist who was out of work in 1987 following Operasi Lalang, when then PM Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed shut down The Star, Sin Chew Daily, and the now defunct Watan, much has improved; although by the same token, much still needs to be done.

Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil has successfully set up the Malaysian Media Council which will allow self-regulation – a crucial step towards greater media freedom. The pro-tem committee chairman is Premesh Chandran, formerly of news portal Malaysiakini.

Still, advocacy groups urge greater legal protection for journalists and access to information, noting that institutional change requires more than symbolic measures.

What many journalists want is to see the abolition of the Printing Presses and Publications Act, which is clearly obsolete in the digital age.

Many of the reforms are already in the drafting stages, but what is holding back Anwar’s Malaysia Madani framework which centres on values such as sustainability, compassion, and innovation?

It serves as the philosophical foundation for the government’s policy direction but transforming ideas into action remains a complex task.

Entrenched bureaucracy and internal political compromises within the multi-party coalition government have slowed bold decision-making.

The PM may not say it but coalition fragility, especially with ideologically diverse partners such as Umno, Pakatan Harapan, and the Borneo-based parties, has forced Anwar to navigate reforms with caution.

While his reform agenda is commendable, he also faces several constraints such as global economic headwinds, including inflation, currency depreciation, and geopolitical instability, all of which limit the government’s fiscal room.

Public frustration over the cost of living, housing affordability, and stagnant wages persists, but governments all around the world are facing those issues.

Our inflation rate for May 2025 was 1.2%, which was the lowest in 51 months. However, the Consumer Price Index the same month increased by 1.2% year on year, especially food and beverages (2.1%), housing, utilities, gas, and other fuels (1%), and transport (0.7%). There will be further impacts after the expanded SST kicks in on Tuesday.

In early 2025, Malaysia’s unemployment rate remained stable at 3.1% with the number of employed persons increasing and the number of jobless people decreasing, which was a record high in April.

Let’s give credit where it is due. Malaysia secured RM89.8bil in approved investments in the first quarter of 2025, a 3.7% increase year on year with Johor recording the highest investment during the first quarter of 2025, with approved investments reaching RM30.1bil.

Malaysia also anticipates a 5% increase in investments for this year in line with gross domestic product growth.

Our ringgit has continued to remain steady against the US dollar and appreciated despite global uncertainties. Remember, just over a year and a half ago, many of us feared it would hit RM5 against the greenback.

We also know the first quarter has been sluggish for Malaysian corporations. Analysts have lowered their year-end targets citing US tariffs that continue to weigh on global trade flows.

No one is clear whether the ceasefire between Israel and Iran will hold, and any escalation there will impact the price of oil.

The disappointing first quarter (1Q2025) results align with Malaysia’s GDP growth of 4% year on year for the period, down from 4.8% in 4Q2024, mostly the result of external factors.

It is hard to explain complex economic scenarios, such as supply change from wars and US tariffs, to the average man in the street as they would only be concerned about the increasing cost of living in their daily lives.

The Anwar administration unfortunately, as with all governments, has to bear the brunt of the voters’ complaints.

Without doubt, the Reformasi legacy set a high bar.

Many Malaysians who supported Anwar for decades expect swift, sweeping change, but institutional reforms often require time, political will, and public consensus.

There is another factor to consider: realpolitik – the political necessity of compromise, especially in a unity government – means not all decisions will reflect progressive reform.

In some cases, they reflect political survival, to keep the government intact. Malaysia cannot afford to have another change of PM in the short-term.

Reformasi is a marathon, not a sprint, and miracles cannot be expected overnight after a 60-year-old entrenched political system dominated by the same political coalition of race-based component parties as well as a religion-based party.

Funding the nation: Money is needed for public services, education, and healthcare reforms, while new challenges such as artificial intelligence technology and digitalisation also demand the disbursement of funds. — 123rf

TAXATION in any form and name is never popular, and the expansion of the sales and service tax (SST) is no exception. It is unpopular, full stop.

Nobody likes taxes but there is no such thing as looking for a better time in the future to impose the taxes for the government to increase revenue.

Putrajaya knows well that this decision won’t make the Prime Minister and his government popular. But it has to be done.

Even if the Madani government were not in power, another government would still have needed to carry out this exercise, maybe under another name.

The government is already two months behind its self-imposed May 1 target but the SST will finally take off on July 1.

What needs to be done is to have as many communication engagements as possible with the media, as well as social media influencers, business and professional groups, non-governmental organisation leaders, and other stakeholders.

Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan remains the best person to explain the issue but it is not the job of one person to do all the explaining.

Some questions are easier to answer while some are more complicated, but clarifications and some convincing are needed for a national buy-in.

The T20 (top 20% of income earners) has questions and priorities that are different from the M40 (middle income) and B40 (low income) groups. Business-men who read financial newspapers will scrutinise interviews with Amir as well as a host of analysts giving different perspectives.

The loudest grumble but certainly a reasonable concern is the inclusion of commercial rental and leasing under the SST, alongside selected goods and services.

The additional cost burden, at a time when many businesses are already struggling with rising operational expenses – including minimum wage adjustments and heightened regulatory compliances – will surely put pressure on margins.

This segment is justified in worrying about increasing operational costs while staring at weak business prospects and the continuing storms of the global trade wars.

The M40, which comprises mostly wage earners, are worried that they might have to pay more for their meals and rentals while members of the B40 group are left struggling and probably have no time at all to read the narratives about the SST.

Let’s not kid ourselves that all will be hunky-dory and that our lives will still be the same. Our pockets will be hit.

We read news reports that an additional revenue of RM5bil is expected in the second half of 2025 from the expanded SST to bolster the Federal Government’s revenue estimate to RM51.7bil, or 2.5% of GDP, from RM46.7bil, or 2.2% of GDP.

The revenue boost is reportedly RM10bil, or 2.5%, per annum but it is still short of about RM7bil to RM12bil of the 3% of GDP that could have come from the goods and services tax (GST).

But of course, no politician is going to touch another round of GST, even though the net spread is wider. The backlash from the word itself would be tremendously negative.

So, in simple language, the targeted collection of revenue from the broadened SST would still be insufficient.

What is needed from the narratives isn’t how much can be collected, but what the extra money from the SST would be used for.

Amir said in an interview: “The role of the government is to be judicious in how it spends and to be smart about how it actually tries to manage the reform.

“But we can see this reform, this transformation, is materially making a difference for Malaysia,’’ he said.

Taxpayers want to know where the money will go. They know development has a cost but it is always good to share with the rakyat again and again.

Money is needed for public services, education, and healthcare reforms while new challenges such as artificial intelligence technology and digitalisation also demand the disbursement of funds, and more funds.

Malaysians also need to wake up to the fact that PETRONAS is no longer the golden goose. We can no longer depend on dividends from PETRONAS as its contributions have dropped. It even had to downsize its own staff to ensure a tighter ship.

Even the rich oil-producing Arab nations started looking for other sources of revenue a long time ago.

Who would have thought that the day would come that conservative Saudi Arabia opens its doors to non-Muslim tourists?

I took a trip to various parts of the country, except Mecca, in 2023 and saw with my own eyes how it is aggressively promoting tourism.

One day, I was sitting at a bar in Al Ula that was blasting loud rave party music and the next, I was standing outside the holy Prophet’s Mosque, the Al Masjid an Nabawi, in Medina, which was previously forbidden to non-Muslims.

Malaysians need to be told that we cannot continue spending more money than the revenue we collect year after year.

That’s what we have been doing for a long time, with our debt-funded excess spending for the last 28 years of budget deficits. The SST collection just isn’t enough to service that debt.

This is a country that has relied on subsidies for almost everything – our petrol, for one, remains the cheapest in the region – but subsidies need to be cut, although this is another move that will never be popular.

The government has to do the necessary surgical cuts now instead of passing the burden to the next generation.

It has over two years before the next general election and can still do what is correct and not what is popular.

That window will close as soon as the election looms.

In fact, the campaigning has already started.

SST collection is not an interesting subject and the focus has been reduced to a debate on why imported fruits should be taxed.

Malaysia is not the only country that has imposed such a tariff in varying ways on imported fruits. For us, they included imported bananas, pineapples, apples, pears and grapes, for example.

Just Google and check. In the United States, a Congress reports states that about 60% of fruits and vegetables gets a tariff of less than 5%. In China, it is said that the tariff ranges from 25% to 40% depending on the fruit types, with tropical fruits getting the hit mostly.

The other countries included Egypt, Japan, South Korea and the European Union nations. It is a flawed argument that our local fruits are mostly seasonal. Our choices are plenty including bananas, guavas, papayas, watermelon, jackfruit and dragon fruits.

But there are good reasons to listen to calls that apples and oranges should be exempt as they are hardly luxury items. It is commendable that the government is prepared to relook these items as they should not be regarded as luxury goods.

World Bank Malaysia lead economist Apurva Sanghi tweeted: “Imported food price inflation is a concern but it may be overblown – only RM16bil of RM79bil imports affected.’’

The SST needs plenty of improvements, and many of the criticisms are justified, but more importantly, the conversations must continue and be encouraged if we are to make Malaysia a better place.

Apurva said: “Tax hikes are painful but people can bear them – if they are meaningful. This means faster progress, especially on governance reforms, and that would increase trust.

“Malaysia needs to spend more; not less. But there are areas where spending can be cut, waste arrested; and foregone revenues clawed back.’’

He cited that both revenue and spending have dropped – 30% lower since 2012 levels, which is well below global peers.

That is not to say we cannot criticise the government. If we are critical of Malaysia, it is because we love our country, and taxpayers should be regarded as customers by the Inland Revenue Board. And we should also adopt the attitude that it is a virtue to pay taxes.

What Malaysians cannot tolerate are horrendous leakages and the stealing of public money by politicians and people that we put our trust in.

Every year the Auditor-General uncovers and makes public losses in funds, irregular payments, and wastage across various ministries.

As Apurva says, the Government Procurement Act has been delayed. Faster progress on such reforms that build trust with the rakyat can make it easier to swallow bitter tax hikes.

He aptly quoted award-winning Japanese writer Haruki Murakami: “I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”

Disturbing discovery: The Budak2 Sekolah Rendah group on Facebook, which features photos of schoolchildren, is said to have over 12,000 followers. — 123rf

IT’S a wake-up call for all of us. Not just parents, teachers and students but every one of us – we need to be vigilant to confront online sex predators, including paedophiles.

The recent expose by social media influencer Wee Yun Nee of a Facebook group that uses photographs of schoolchildren is most commendable.

Wee, also known as Mekyun, has taken the trouble to lodge police reports beyond just highlighting the issue after she found her pictures, from when she was younger, being used.

The group, called Budak2 Sekolah Rendah (Primary School Children), is said to have over 12,000 followers, and that is very disturbing.

We do not know how many of these followers are actually unknowing school kids or adults but the group sure attracted the attention of mental sickos with paedophilic tendencies.

It is said to have started as an undercover “community” disguised as a nostalgic forum for sharing memories of school life.

Eventually, it grew into something far more insidious as a gathering place for adults using coded language and imagery to indulge in paedophilic behaviour.

Rightly, it has been shut down by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

Mekyun shared some of the lewd comments brazenly posted on Facebook and it was clear that there are predators out there who get sexually aroused just by ogling children, mostly in tudung and baju kurung school uniforms.

Wee, also known as Mekyun, has taken the trouble to lodge police reports beyond just highlighting the issue after she found her pictures, from when she was younger, being used.

These perverts openly expressed their sexual desires; about what they wished to do with these children and fetishising school uniforms. They were also said to be using coded language that’s common among paedophile networks.

It was clear that these degenerates treated the Facebook page as a digital playground to exploit children and sexualise the school environment. The pictures of the unknowing children were posted on the account by these degenerates.

Closing down the page is not enough. Every effort must be made by MCMC and the police to trace and hunt down the account holders who have posted nauseating comments. Some of these accounts have profile pictures, real or otherwise.

They should be publicly shamed for their actions, even if they are the average father and uncle. We must adopt zero tolerance for this.

Sinar Harian quoted a Twitter user as saying that these culprits should be reported to their wives with screenshot evidence of their husbands’ – or grandfathers’ – comments. They must be held accountable.

Mekyun showed screenshots of these indecent comments to prove the shocking behaviour of these deviants.

In Malaysia, such offences may fall under Sections 292 and 292A of the Penal Code, relating to the dissemination of obscene material and the sexual exploitation of children. Offenders could face lengthy prison sentences and mandatory registration as sex offenders.

In a country still grappling with rising online threats to children, the exposure of Budak2 Sekolah Rendah serves as a chilling reminder of the need for vigilance, policy reform, and zero tolerance toward those who exploit the most vulnerable members of society.

The fight against these online predators is an ongoing one. In fact, last year, the MCMC and police launched “Op Pedo” to track down individuals who possess, store, and distribute pornographic and child abuse materials (CSAM).

Raids were conducted across six states and territories, namely Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor, Terengganu, Penang, and Perak. The ages of those arrested ranged from 20 to 74 with some suspects admitting to finding and buying explicit content via social media and messaging platforms such as X and Telegram.

The New Straits Times quoted Bukit Aman’s D11 principal assistant director Senior Assistant Commissioner Siti Kamsiah Hassan as saying that “access to such pornography has made predators even more brazen, with some going to the extent of attempting to abduct children.”

According to the 2022 “ICT Use and Access by Individuals and Households Survey Report” released by the Statistics Depart-ment in May 2023, “Households with Internet access increased to 96% in 2022 compared with 94.9% in 2021”.

And, as reported by the Focus news portal, in 2018, the number of IP addresses linked to sex crimes spiked up to 2,660 and it kept increasing dramatically afterwards – escalating to 48,752 IP addresses in 2021.

“In total, there were 93,368 IP addresses detected engaging in cyberpaedophilia activities until the first quarter of 2022,’’ it said.

Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil had reprimanded Meta (which owns Facebook) for its continued failure to curb paedophilia and sexual grooming on Facebook, saying this was one example why the social media licence was needed – to curb crimes, including sexual crimes against children.

It is not an infringement of the media’s freedom or of the right to privacy as some naively believe.

Meta has made plenty of promises to have strong moderation and strict policies to protect minors but these haven’t been effective.

It is probably even harder to track down the offenders in non-English speaking countries; in Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia is widely used on social media platforms. It is not just a moderation failure but a systemic failure.

Fighting these shady manipulative characters is not just the work of the enforcement agencies, it is a public responsibility.

All of us need to speak up against such behaviour.

The clampdown on Budak2 Sekolah Rendah should not be an isolated case. We must never allow similar groups to crop up again.

Businessmen with titles who siphon money meant for projects into their own pockets have to be brought to justice. These loans are meant to support projects, not for their personal expenditures and indulgences. —123rf

IT is common knowledge that most of our top business tycoons have, at some point in their careers, made flawed decisions that led to losses.

None of these big names have had easy paths to where they are. They have often put their company’s money, or their own, into ventures that failed to return any profits or worse, even failed to take off.

Not every deal is a successful one although we would like to think that these business personalities have all the answers.

We like to see them as symbols of success, with brilliant minds and the Midas touch; as people incapable of making blunders. However, risk-taking and failure are simply intrinsic parts of any business.

But a faulty business decision is not the same as failed integrity or abuse of trust for personal gain. In fact, they are the opposite.

Siphoning off multimillion bank loans meant for a company project to finance a lifestyle of luxury and indulgence is certainly unacceptable. This could include acquisition of opulent homes overseas and expensive liquor, among others.

Worse, while most of the money from the loans is spent, the project remains stalled, and a white knight has to be sought to clean up the mess.

For sure, the poor contractors would not have been paid and, in turn, the workers.

Malaysians are by now getting used to reading about some businessmen with Tan Sri titles being arrested, remanded, and investigated for various alleged crimes including money laundering.

Luxury cars, expensive watches, and jewellery are usually seized while bank accounts, both personal and their company’s, are frozen by the enforcement agencies.

It would not be wrong to suggest that we have even lost interest in cases involving a criminal Datuk or Datuk Seri – they’re just so prevalent nowadays. There is only excitement when a Tan Sri is implicated.

These arrests make big news, and the identities of these personalities are often speculated about quite accurately. After all, Malaysia is a small country and it is hard to keep these things a secret, but Malaysians also want to see these errant figures being formally charged in the courts.

Many high-profile cases seem to have quietly faded away after a while, leaving many of us wondering why. Is it because there are insufficient grounds to charge them or are there other reasons that the public can only speculate about, rightly or wrongly?

It doesn’t help the authorities if these cases turn cold, whether they involve the police or the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

More importantly, the recent cases of abuses of financial resources raises ethical, economic, and legal concerns.

Bank loans provide businesses with capital to grow, innovate, and sustain operations – not to fulfil personal delights.

Our institutions extend these loans based on trust, business plans, and the borrower’s plans, projections, and credibility.

It is fraud when loans are redirected towards something else under the pretext of developing the business project. Those who do so are not mere failed businessmen, they are criminals who have failed to uphold integrity and credibility.

They have betrayed the institutions, including banks, that provided the support.

But there is also another serious question: What has happened to the auditors, internal and external, and bank officials, who are supposed to keep track of such projects, and how the money has been used?

These abuses, at so many levels, are disturbing and chilling, as they are a clear reflection of deep ethical rot. They also mean weaknesses in monitoring mechanisms.

There are legal, enforcement, and regulatory areas that need improvement.

When professional bodies and experts are implicated, it takes on another dimension because they are seen to have willingly engaged in deceit and fraud. It no longer involves one dishonest individual but a trail of bad actors leveraging on connections and falsifying documentation while hiding away facts and figures.

When accountability flies out of the windows of accounting firms, then we have hit rock bottom.

If there is a lesson to be learnt here, it’s that we should not be so quick to award titles and honours, and highlight superficial successes.

They may have a Tan Sri to their names but they are failures if they have no ethics. These crooks don’t deserve any badge of honour, and any they wear should be taken away.

THE resignations this week of two Cabinet members, as expected, became front-page news items and sparked speculation across Malaysia’s political and media circles.

After all, it’s not everyday that two ministers would announce their decisions to quit at one go, even though it came as little surprise for many.

Economy Minister Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli had pledged during the PKR party polls campaign that he would quit if he was not re-elected as party deputy president.

With Nurul Izzah Anwar challenging him, it was clear that the tide was against him and Rafizi knew defeat was imminent.

His ally, Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, also failed to keep his vice-president post, and has decided to leave his Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability Ministry.

The two are held in high regard, not just by their party supporters, but also the general public.

In Nik Nazmi’s case, the media admires him for knowing his subject well, and he is also easily accessible.

Rafizi preferred to use his own social media platform effectively to reach out to the public and was one of the few party generals who readily took on opponents.

His ability to use simple language without technical jargon helped the party to explain government policies.

The media always loves factional feuds as it sells stories.

There will always be suggestions of cracks in a governing coalition or a looming political crisis.

There was even a fake news item about 11 PKR MPs, said to be aligned to Rafizi, wanting to call a press conference to announce their withdrawal of support for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

It never happened. Instead, it was quickly dismissed by Chang Lih Kang, the Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, a re-elected PKR vice-president supporting Rafizi.

Nik Nazmi has also said he and Rafizi had resigned from their ministerial posts “but we will not betray the party.’’

Their resignations must be respected and many would even admire their principles for taking defeats well.

Having sacrificed their early adulthood for politics instead of cushy, well-paid jobs in the corporate sector, their disappointment was understandable.

They fought for Reformasi in the earliest stage of PKR, at a time when most shied away from the party.

But politics is cruel. As in all elections, there has to be winners and losers and no one will remember the losers in the next few months.

Even their most loyal supporters would happily take over the vacancies left by Rafizi and Nik Nazmi.

Already, some members of Parliament linked to the two have reportedly sent signals to the PM that they are ready if offered positions and their names have surfaced in private conversations.

In Malaysia’s current political climate, the resignations of the two are neither an existential threat nor a sign of federal instability.

In fact, the broader picture suggests the opposite: the government remains intact, its leadership strong, and its policy direction clear.

The resignations, while noteworthy, will not derail the Anwar administration.

While both Nik Nazmi (left) and Rafizi will be missed in the government, in Malaysia’s current political climate, the resignations of the two are neither an existential threat nor a sign of federal instability, says the writer. — Bernama

As a journalist, I am often asked if the Anwar administration is stable and if his government can win the next general election, purportedly because the predominantly Malay voters are not with him.

The first question is simple to answer – the Unity Government has remained intact. Anwar has the numbers. If he didn’t, the opposition would have tabled a vote of no confidence against him in Parliament at each meeting.

Will he win the next general elections? Well, he has two years more and as they say, even two weeks is a long time in politics.

Anwar Ibrahim enters this moment not from a position of vulnerability, but from a place of demonstrated leadership.

Fresh off the successful Asean Summit hosted in Kuala Lumpur, Anwar has emerged as a key regional statesman, guiding Malaysia’s foreign policy with clarity and principle. Domestically, his administration still commands a parliamentary majority and holds the confidence of a wide-based coalition spanning ethnic, ideological, and regional lines.

A few individual resignations – while unfortunate – do not erode the legitimacy of a government that continues to function with stability and purpose.

The strength of the Cabinet, in any government, does not rest on a few individuals, but on the collective commitment to reform, economic revitalisation, and national unity.

Both the outgoing ministers contributed meaningfully during their tenure but their resignation will not paralyse the machinery of government, nor will it affect the strategic direction of national policy.

Malaysia’s political evolution over the past few years has seen a shift toward coalition-style governance – often messy, occasionally turbulent, but increasingly mature.

In this context, Cabinet reshuffles or resignations are not signs of collapse, but part of the political cycle of coalition management.

Importantly, no major coalition partner has withdrawn support.

There is no mass defection in the PKR, no floor-crossing crisis which the law forbids and certainly no loss of majority. What we see is not the unravelling of a government, but a recalibration – one that allows room for leadership renewal and rebalancing of portfolios.

Crucially, the core agenda of the government – economic recovery, institutional reform, good governance, and social justice – remains untouched.

Key ministries are operational, reforms are moving forward, and public confidence in the government’s policy direction has held steady.

The upcoming Budget discussions, the continued rollout of digital economy initiatives, and major infrastructure projects are all proceeding as scheduled. These are the markers of a functioning, resilient administration – not one in disarray.

Instead of being a setback, these resignations present a chance for the Prime Minister to refresh his Cabinet.

It opens the door for new faces, possibly technocrats or reformists. There are certainly many MPs and technocrats who are qualified or think they are good enough.

Economist Dr Nungsari Ahmad Radhi, who has been helping the government in the background, is one possibility.

Petaling Jaya MP Lee Cheang Chung, a central council member, is a 44-year-old researcher and environmental activist. He is pleasant and accessible, and the right fit to handle environment and sustainability causes.

Then, there is Ledang MP Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh, who successfully campaigned against the Internal Security Act and had served as a Bersih vice-president.

There are many others and it doesn’t matter who they had sided with in the party polls.

The renewal can inject energy and sharpen focus, particularly as the government approaches the mid-point of its term.

The only question is how much of a change Anwar wants to make with the General Election not so far away.

The senatorship of Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Aziz, the Investment, Trade and Industry Minister, will expire at the end of the year and Anwar will need to find a replacement.

That’s not a crisis either, but another opportunity for Anwar to reinforce his message of performance, transparency, and unity.

Choosing the right replacements wisely will allow him to strengthen his team while continuing to honour the diversity of the coalition.