Commentary: Anwar consolidates power, but has he delivered in his first year as Malaysia PM?

KUALA LUMPUR: From the get-go, there had been questions about how long Mr Anwar Ibrahim would be able to last as Malaysia’s prime minister.

His decades-long quest for the top seat kept getting thwarted, and he spent several stints in prison on charges he has described as politically motivated.

Finally, after several twists and turns in last year’s general election that resulted in a hung parliament, the Malaysian king stepped in and Mr Anwar was sworn in as the country’s 10th prime minister on Nov 24.

After a noisy 12 months of politics, Mr Anwar has consolidated power to command a strong majority in parliament, giving him a clear runway to the remainder of his five-year mandate.

Malaysia under the Anwar administration has been the most stable since the May 2018 general election that led to a revolving door of governments and three prime ministers. The so-called unity government led by Mr Anwar’s multi-racial Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance currently enjoys a two-thirds majority in the country’s 222-member parliament, a margin last seen in 2008.

In the past few weeks, a growing number of opposition MPs from Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) have publicly declared their support for Mr Anwar’s unity government.

Now, Mr Anwar’s main challenges are to crank up economic expansion, deliver on job growth and tackle cost of living pressures that together have become a toxic cocktail spreading disillusionment among ordinary Malaysians with his administration.

All of this will require fresh approaches.

POLITICAL DITHERING

The main gripe against Mr Anwar is that he is moving too cautiously, a criticism that several of his long-time business and political associates acknowledge is justified. 

They note that Mr Anwar continues to dither over a planned Cabinet reshuffle that was supposed to take place more than a month ago together with sweeping top-level changes in the civil service. Mr Anwar, who is also finance minister, was also reportedly determined to reintroduce the goods and services tax (GST) at last month’s budget announcement but backtracked at the last moment after he was warned of the possible political backlash. 

Mr Anwar’s seeming reluctance to take bold steps is largely due to questions over his political pull with the country’s dominant ethnic Muslim Malays, who make up over 60 per cent of the country’s 33.57 million people and whose political allegiances have undergone a sea change over the last decade with a greater tilt towards religious conservatism. 

To shore up his political credentials with the Malays, Mr Anwar has been uncompromising in his condemnation against Israel’s response to the Oct 7 Hamas incursion. 

In recent weeks he has travelled to Türkiye to meet with his close ally President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as to Saudi Arabia for an emergency meeting of leaders from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

More recently, while he was in San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, he repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire and reiterated Malaysia’s continued support for Hamas, which the US and several other countries have branded a terrorist organisation.

Malaysians generally support the government’s position on the conflict in the Middle East. But there is also concern that Mr Anwar’s position may be too strident and it could attract recriminations against Malaysia, a country that ranks as one of the world’s top 20 trading nations.

To be sure, there are no quick fixes to winning over the Malay vote, particularly the younger set who are jaded with the rampant corruption in politics and have no in-built loyalty to established parties, such as the right-wing Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), the long-established and graft-tainted United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and its breakaway entity Bersatu.

Rather than trying to outdo the country’s Malay parties at championing causes related to Islam, Mr Anwar stands a better chance of building his political prestige among the Malays by tackling problems facing the poorer segments of society and the unemployed.

OUTSIDER AT THE CENTRE

The complex set of challenges facing Mr Anwar on his first anniversary has a lot to do with the circumstances surrounding his arduous journey to becoming prime minister.

Mr Anwar is no stranger to Malaysian politics. He was at one point the designated heir apparent for the top job with a strong understanding of the inner workings of power before he fell out in 1998 with one-time political strongman Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who initiated a purge of all politicians and civil servants aligned to the former deputy prime minister.

But few in Malaysian politics have spent so many years in incarceration and the periphery before making it to the top job. And because the November 2022 election results were inconclusive, Mr Anwar’s appointment to the top job only came after he reached out to his political rivals.

UMNO and its president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi were crucial to Mr Anwar claiming the premiership. It was only after UMNO threw its support behind the PH-led coalition, that other regional parties from the East Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah fell in line to pave the way for Mr Anwar’s appointment as prime minister.

Against this backdrop, Mr Anwar was forced to make compromises in the formation of government and in his management of the country’s powerful civil service that had long forged symbiotic relationships with a political elite and have long been suspicious of the new prime minister’s reform initiative.

These political concessions have made Mr Anwar a prisoner to the allegiances he was forced to enter into to become prime minister. Now he must find a way to break away from these shackles.

What should Mr Anwar do?

For starters, he needs to capitalise on his two-thirds majority in parliament and display a greater audacity for change. He needs to assemble a new Cabinet team that is more focused on bringing economic change because nothing succeeds like spreading prosperity.

The Malaysian economy expanded by 3.3 per cent in the third quarter of this year, up from a two-year low of 2.9 per cent in the previous quarter. But in a country accustomed to growth rates of at least 5 per cent annually, public sentiment over the national outlook is tepid.  

He also needs to quickly make changes to key positions in the civil service, particularly at the leadership levels in the country’s powerful regulatory agency to ensure that his anti-corruption rhetoric is matched with actions.

Mr Anwar’s closest advisors have noted privately that their boss wants to serve another term in office after his current term expires sometime in late 2027. For that to happen, Mr Anwar will need to operate on the assumption that he is only afforded one term and deliver on his pledges to bring reform in the next four years.