This raises the question of how political WhatsApp groups function. Compared to other social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram, WhatsApp is incredibly intimate. It is where your personal conversations live, and the platform you are most likely to use frequently. The platform’s place in the information-consumption pipeline cannot be overstated.

IMAN analysed over 558,770 messages from two Malaysian political WhatsApp groups, covering Q1 2023 to Q3 2026. One belongs to the opposition; the other belongs to the government. The project began with the intention of studying political discourse, but we found a logistical pipeline through which political discourse was funneled, often by a small group of individuals in groups with thousands of members. We do not identify any individuals in these groups, nor name them; this piece focuses on the logistics both sides employed.

Two groups from opposing political sides

We chose two groups that sit in the same political space but in opposite directions, because that is the only way to distinguish machinery from politics. The first is an opposition-aligned group. It moves about 144 messages daily. The second is a government-aligned group that moves about 739 messages daily—the louder of the two. While these groups operate at different tempos, with different politics, and in different communities, their structures are nearly identical.

This difference in tempo is worth examining. In the opposition group, a typical burst of activity runs 26 messages over about four hours, with a dozen people involved. In the government-aligned group, a typical burst runs 1,345 messages over 46 hours with 104 individuals, and 63% of all its messages arrive within a minute of each other.

Who is actually posting

Across both groups, twenty accounts posted 49% of every link we collected—103,897 of 211,856. Inside these groups, the concentration is narrower: fourteen accounts supply half of everything that the opposition group ever receives, and ten accounts supply half of the government-aligned group’s.

Most members contribute nothing at all. On the other hand, the heavy accounts do not behave like readers who forward things. Six of the top ten have a medium gap between consecutive messages of zero minutes and post between 63% and 84% of their material within two minutes of their previous message. This reads as an individual pasting or forwarding a prepared batch.

They also fall into recognisable, specialised jobs. Some are party-press relays. One account posted 5,785 links across 5,786 messages: exactly one link each, no images, and no text of its own. Almost all these links traced back to one political party’s party organ. Another does the same for a rival party’s organ at 93% concentration; a third runs at 98% concentration on a governing coalition’s own media arm. These accounts express no opinion of their own; they move copy from one place to another.

Others are platform distributors, forwarding multiple messages in a single burst, then falling silent. Some attach an actual argument to what they forward; these do the persuasive work, but they are a minority. And a small number specialise in connection: posting invitations and channel links rather than material. One such account posted only 907 messages but 4,155 links, most of them routed into other groups.

We tested the hypothesis that one person ran the most synchronised accounts across several handles. This appeared not to be true. The two most overlapping accounts in the data share 1,892 items, of which 1,885 are articles from the same newspaper; neither consistently posts first, and the median gap between them is over an hour. One operator with two phones would produce a fixed order and near-zero lag. Two people subscribed to the same feed produce what we actually see.

This suggests the concentration in this system sits upstream, in the sources.

Where the material comes from

Of 211,856 links, roughly 11% originate from news organisations, and a further 13% from a party’s own press. Two-thirds come from social media platforms, with most coming from TikTok.

Where journalism and news organisations do appear, it is aligned press rather than news. In this regard, both groups mirror each other almost exactly. In the opposition-aligned group, half of all the news links come from the single party’s own news portal, and a fifth more from a single aligned outlet. In the government-aligned group, a fifth comes from the governing party’s organ, a further tenth from the coalition’s own media arm, and the largest single share from one mainstream news daily that runs with the government. Neither group is reading the same country. Each is being fed by its own side’s media arm, and increasingly even that arrives through TikTok rather than from a newsroom’s website.

The movement over three and a half years is unambiguous in aggregate—TikTok from 30% of platform content to 51%. YouTube collapsed from a 2024 peak of 25% to 4-10%.

But split it by group, and the interesting thing is that the two sides are drifting apart.

Same country, same political landscape, but opposite ends. The opposition operation is consolidating on TikTok. The government-aligned operation has moved the other way, and now runs an almost even TikTok/Facebook split. These two sides are making opposite bets about where Malaysians will consume their information leading into the election year.

What happens to it on the way through

The middle of the pipeline is where everyone assumes they already understand what goes on in these groups: a thousand people in a room, arguing about politics. This is where the analysis needs to be precise about what happens in these spaces.

Firstly, it is not silent. Of the 558,770 messages in the two groups, 128,295 are messages members type themselves, or at least forward as originally authored texts. That is nearly a third of the opposition group and a fifth of the government-aligned one. Slightly more people type something at some point than ever contribute anything. 993 people conversing against 942 suppliers in the opposition group, and 814 against 744 in the government-aligned one. There is a conversation here. But more importantly, what is the conversation about?

A link, an image or a video draws a response 18% of the time in the opposition group and 35% in the government-aligned one. A remark—something a member typed—draws a response 36% and 42% of the time.

When members do engage with each other, this is what they say. One remark in eight in the opposition group asks a question, and one in five in the government-aligned group. Roughly one in ten and one in five give a reason. One in eleven and one in eight agree or endorse. Counting each message once, remarks carrying insult, derision, or a name for the other side make up 13% of the opposition group’s talk and 21% of the government-aligned group’s.

The questions are the interesting part, because they mostly go nowhere. The opposition group has 7,255 questions, and the government-aligned group has 14,995. A question is followed by another member speaking within ten minutes 46% and 57% of the time—and a remark that is not a question is followed 50% and 60% of the time. Asking makes a response less likely, not more. A question here is not a request the group takes up; it is just another thing said into it.

Nor does talk usually build. Sequences of consecutive remarks, interrupted by new material, are a single isolated message 58% of the time in the opposition group and 75% of the time in the government-aligned one. Exchanges—three messages or more, from at least two people vary between the two groups. In the opposition group, they hold 47% of all talk and run a median of four messages over ten minutes; this group converses in short bursts at scale. In the government-aligned group, they hold 18% of all talk and run a median of three messages over three minutes. This group is not about conversation; it is a very large number of people saying things in the same place.

Some of what counts as ‘talk’ is not typed in the moment. In the government-aligned group, 22% of members’ own messages often come in the form of a statement composed elsewhere and pasted in, something with bold Unicode headings and bullet glyphs. In the opposition group, it is 10%. The commentary layer has its own supply chain.

The people supplying are not the people talking. The twenty heaviest suppliers in each group put in 53% and 60% of the material—and only 16% and 13% of their own output is a remark of any kind. For everyone else, the figure is 42% and 27%. Seven and nine of each group’s top twenty suppliers appear in its top twenty talkers; the rest of those who supply do not speak. Two populations share a room: a dozen accounts pushing through a content queue, and a much larger crowd mostly talking to each other.

The layer above

The groups are not the top of the chain. WhatsApp and Telegram channels sit above them, one-to-many broadcast feeds that members re-post by hand into many-to-many spaces. Both have public preview pages, so you can read this layer without joining anything.

These groups are extraordinarily concentrated. Of every WhatsApp channel link relayed into these two groups—2,599 in the government-aligned group alone—82% came from a single five-channel network run by one person, spanning politics, Islamic finance, halal economy, and Bumiputera economic activism under one house brand. That same operator is also among the top link-posters inside the groups. He runs the broadcaster and works the relay.

Party media offices operated openly. One Telegram channel we traced states its own function in the bio; it belongs to the governing party’s communications bureau. The hashtags stamped across several thousand messages inside the group below—the ones we could count but not attribute—turn out to be that office’s own branding, published one layer up where everyone can see it.

Its delivery format is worth describing: it functions as a newsletter. 172 times, the same structure entered the group: a run of headline-and-link items, then a standing footer listing the office’s Telegram, Instagram, X and YouTube channels in both Malay and English. A party communications office packages its daily output as a bulletin, drops it into a chat group, and attaches a subscription funnel at the bottom.

This layer also includes the sitting Prime Minister’s channel with 102,000 followers, a serving deputy minister, a party secretary-general, a state chief minister, several newspaper channels, and a set of foreign-language channels pushing Middle East material into the Malaysian stream.

One channel branded as a cyber-trooper platform, with over 7,000 subscribers, supplied the largest single volume of Telegram links into the opposition group. It has been dormant since late 2025. The group it fed now continues at the same volume, drawing from other sources. The infrastructure has outlived its suppliers.

The layer below

The outbound pipeline is visible in the datasets. The opposition-aligned group posted 1,801 invitation links to 654 distinct other WhatsApp groups, from 140 different members, alongside links to 110 Telegram channels. It routes more than it receives. The government-aligned group posted 2,599 links to WhatsApp channels and 1,573 invitations to 135 other groups, and carries 13,419 hashtag-campaign messages compared to the opposition’s 5,168.

What is striking is how little explicit instruction accompanies any of this. No sharing instructions —i.e., sebarkan, viralkan, kongsi—appear in more than 1% of messages. The pipeline runs on habit more than on orders. That said, orders do exist, and when they appear, they typically take the form of petition drives. Petition drives appear in the opposition group 178 times and 104 times in the government-aligned one; rally and protest calls appear 913 and 1,775 times, respectively.

Four parallel systems, not one network

The intuitive model of a disinformation network is a relay: content enters at the top and cascades down through connected groups. We tested that directly, and it does not describe what the two groups are doing. The test required solving a technical problem first. TikTok and Facebook mint a new share code every time someone shares, so the same video posted in two groups produces two links that look unrelated. We resolved 58,163 of those short links back to their underlying video IDs, raising the share of content we could trace across groups from about half (50%) to three-quarters (74% and 77%) and increasing the measured overlap.

With that much better data, the answer became clearer: overlap between any two groups stays under 1%. Even with three-quarters of links traceable, these groups overwhelmingly don’t consume at the same times; they are separate audiences. No group sits upstream of the other; for the largest pair, 823 shared items split 52% to 48% on who posted first. A relay chain produces a lopsided split. An even split happens when two groups draw independently from the same source at roughly the same moment. When something does cross, it crosses fast: half of the shared items appear in the other group the same day.

These are two parallel outlets of separate partisan supply systems, loosely connected at the edges by a handful of members and the occasional campaign text that passes through both at once. That distinction matters for anyone trying to figure out what to do. There is no chokepoint here to close, and no single upstream to interrupt. Several supply systems run in parallel, each efficient and staffed by roughly a dozen people central to its operations.

Put it together, and the mechanism is simple enough to describe in these terms. Platform content and party-media output arrive in batches and from a handful of accounts. The room talks over it rather than about it, and most never asks if it is true. The same material then goes out to hundreds of other groups and channels, punctuated every so often by a call to sign something, attend something, or report someone.

The two groups in this study agree about nothing. One exists to attack the government; the other exists to defend it. They read different media sources, follow different channels, share less than 1% of their material, and are drifting onto different platforms as the 16th General Elections come closer. They are built the same way, out of the same parts, by the same number of people.

Ten to fourteen accounts per group, dispensing queues assembled somewhere else, into a room of a thousand strangers who are indeed talking—to each other, past the material, in remarks that draw more response than anything they were sent. Whichever side you are on, that is who is choosing what you saw this morning.

Pendidikan Sivik dan Kewarganegaraan (Civic Education) was once introduced in our primary and secondary school system. However, after speaking to 110 interviewees across Peninsular Malaysia, none could clearly recall what they had learned from the subject, or what they had carried with them into adulthood. Some remembered civic classes being replaced by supposedly ‘more important’ subjects.

Since 2019, civic education has been embedded into subjects such as History, Bahasa Melayu, English, Pendidikan Islam and Pendidikan Moral rather than taught as a standalone subject1. We do not yet know how effective this current approach will be in the long term. What we do know from our interviewees, aged between 18 and 35, is that this cohort of Malaysian Chinese Youth did not feel that they had received an adequate civic education.

When we analysed the interviews, we were not looking for whether participants could name fancy terms such as parliamentary democracy, constitutional monarchy or representative democracy. These concepts matter, but being able to memorise them tells us very little about whether someone can actually navigate democratic life.

Two things stood out more clearly.

The first was institutional literacy2: whether participants understood who has power over what, how different institutions relate to one another, and where citizens should go when they encounter a problem. A person may know the meaning of ‘separation of powers’ and still not know how their country works, whether a particular issue falls under an MP, ADUN, local council, state government or federal ministry.

The second was political efficacy3: whether participants felt confident enough to understand political matters, form their own judgement and believe that their actions could make some difference4.

Interestingly, across our interviews, this confidence appeared more consistently among participants who had gone through STPM, particularly those who studied Pengajian Am. Not all could clearly remember what they learnt, but the differences lie in how they discussed political institutions and issues. Some of these politically informed participants were highly critical of Malaysian institutions and spoke strongly about unequal treatment or limited opportunities in their educational pathways.

This is crucial because greater civic knowledge does not automatically produce greater trust in government. People may understand institutions better and, at the same time, feel more confident disagreeing with how those institutions operate.

In the literature, this is described as stronger internal political efficacy alongside weaker external political efficacy5. They can understand politics and participate in political processes but are less convinced that institutions and leaders will listen to them. This mirrors the fact that greater understanding sometimes gives them more reasons to question the institutions around them.

Yet the absence of civic education does not mean the absence of political education. It means that political education moves elsewhere. After all, being exposed to politics is fundamentally different from being equipped to interpret politics.

This brings us to the next question: if schools don’t teach us how politics works, who does?

The First-to-Door Model

Almost all of our interviewees said that they did not feel represented by any political party or politicians. They were not particularly attracted to sloganised politics or heroic political figures. What may have worked for older generations did not necessarily reflect the concerns, language or expectations of younger Malaysians today.

Yet when we analysed how participants understood Malaysia and the Malaysian Chinese community, recurring patterns appeared. Their political understanding was often strongly influenced either by their parents or by narratives produced by political parties. My colleague and I frame this as a “first-to-door” model.

The idea is relatively simple. When someone does not have a strong institutional understanding of politics, it creates a gap for others to define what politics means. Within this context, the first actor to offer them a convincing explanation shapes how everything that follows is understood.

Whoever reaches the door first is not simply giving them information; they are the one giving them a way to interpret later information. A parent explains politics through the experiences of an earlier generation. A political party explains a policy through the interests of a particular party. An influencer explains it through anger towards political elites. None of these explanations is automatically wrong.

One interviewee who works as an STPM tutor shared how his students feel about STPM:

Because every kid when they grow up, they don’t know about politics. Like, a student may not know what is quota or Matriculation. But who will tell them? Parents, uncle, aunt. They will tell them… family will tell them the real story. Kids believe what they say because they don’t have their own judgment yet. So whatever they say, they will feel it is true.

Another interviewee said:

So when someone presents an argument to me, the information I receive isn’t independently verified by my own reading, because I lack that strong baseline of knowledge to support and process this information; I need external guides to help me make sense of it.

The danger is that if I only rely on a single angle, I get easily swayed. I feel cheated by DAP, then cheated by Hew Kuan Yau, then cheated by the MCA. So now, I prefer to listen to multiple opinions and then choose what makes the most sense to me.

…So, I rely on two main sources [political influencers/channels] to verify the news. One is BBK.. [t]he other one is Lawyer Ang Woei Shang. What I do is combine their points of view. I use my own brain to process the information and decide which perspective is more reliable.

After participating in Bersih rallies a decade ago, the interviewee did not stop at the first door. He compared sources and built his own way to check political claims. However, this remained a personal workaround, not a civic foundation available to everyone.

On the other hand, political party members and officers from different parties raised similar reflections when probed deeper. One explained:

Most young people I know have a blank slate. They don’t understand what democracy is, what the conflict between parties means at a structural level, or what their vote actually affects. It [their political understanding] depends on who [political party] approaches them first and treats them well. That’s both a vulnerability and an opportunity.

Of course, young people are not literally blank slates. They have families, identities, experiences and opinions. The point is that when they lack a strong institutional baseline, they may not have another framework through which to assess the political explanations presented to them.

When Political Choice Is Built on Fear

This becomes particularly important in Malaysia because political competition is still regularly framed through race and religion. Political parties are still offering a simple explanation for a complicated problem: your community is under threat, and we are the only ones protecting you6. One interviewee described the problem very clearly:

I think the way everyone attracts voters is not healthy. It’s always using racial and religious propaganda to intimidate voters. It’s not a good thing. I actually hope I can choose a party because I think your policies can work for this country. Not because I am afraid that I can’t sit with girls in the cinema or I can’t wear shorts. I don’t want to vote out of fear.

A lot of times, it’s not what we really think. We are influenced and propagandised. We think, if we don’t vote for this one, we will die. I think for Malays, they will feel that if the rocket [DAP] goes up, it will bully them. For Chinese, I think it’s the same about green waves. A lot of times we don’t understand why we are so afraid of each other.

And a lot of times I think I can’t trust my own reasoning. Because it’s not only the opponent doing this. I’m not only talking about DAP, but also any party. You always need to show your voters that you are protecting your race, as if the other party is really evil. You make this move, the other party makes their move, and a lot of people will be afraid.

…Even if I know that, at least in the current political environment, this is the way to exploit these fears. So no matter who goes up, he will operate like this.

What stood out to us was not simply that the participant recognised racial and religious propaganda. The more important part was the sentence: “I think I can’t trust my own reasoning.” This participant was not politically apathetic. The participant could recognise that fear was being produced, that different parties had incentives to reproduce it, and that voters on different sides could be made afraid of each other. Yet after receiving ‘enough’ political information, and recognising manipulation for what it was, it did not automatically produce confidence in escaping it.

This is where weak civic education can make race-based political narratives particularly difficult to challenge. It does not mean that ethnic grievances are invented. Some concerns about inequality, education, representation or government policy have real historical and institutional foundations. Civic education should not be used to tell young people that these grievances are illegitimate.

It should help them examine those grievances more carefully. Instead of stopping at “the Malays are doing this to us”, a citizen should be able to ask: Which policy? Which institution?

Our study speaks specifically to Malaysian Chinese youths. However, the wider mechanism may extend beyond this group: political actors can turn uncertainty into fear by presenting another community as the source of political loss or insecurity. The purpose is not to remove race from political discussion. Race remains part of Malaysia’s institutional and political reality. The purpose is to understand exactly where race matters, where institutions matter, and where political actors may be using one to explain the other.

Politics Is For Elites

One interviewee described another problem:

[While voting]... most people follow the trend. This is a weakness of democracy. It becomes elitism. The system was designed by educated people, and really only educated people with knowledge can fully navigate it. Most people just follow the flow. That’s normal, but it’s a real risk.

Theoretically, politics may feel elitist, but democracy should not be. Understanding how our country works and where to go when something goes wrong should not require insider knowledge.

This is also exactly why we should be careful when describing young people as politically apathetic. Some genuinely have little interest in politics. This group exists in every society, and it’s okay. But what looks like apathy in the larger group can also be uncertainty, disillusionment or a lack of clear entry points. Some young people are not saying, “I don’t care”; they might be saying, “I don’t understand enough to know whether this matters, what it means, or what I can do about it.”

Those are very different problems.

Giving them more political news will not necessarily solve the second one. Someone can follow political news every day and still struggle to understand who has responsibility for a decision or whether a political promise is realistic.

What they need is context, but we only have one Fahmi Reza (who ran an online civic education series during GE15 called Kelas Demokrasi). Organisations such as Tindak are also making democracy, elections and public institutions more accessible to ordinary Malaysians. Their work matters because they have identified a gap that formal structures have not adequately filled.

However, we have a limited number of organisations with the resources and capacity to conduct democratic education for this cohort of Malaysian youth. Whether a young Malaysian understands the political system should not depend on whether they happen to meet the right activist, attend the right workshop or follow the right social media account.

I do not think there is an honest individual-level answer. Young people cannot be told to “educate themselves” when the information environment is already crowded, uneven and politically interested. Nor is it enough to ask teachers to do more within an already overloaded system.

The answer has to be institutional. Civic education should be treated as part of the country’s basic democratic infrastructure, with clearer responsibility shared across schools, universities, public agencies and civil society. The state should not tell citizens what to think, but ensure they understand how decisions are made and where they can act when something goes wrong.

In our interviews, Pengajian Am was an example of structured political learning that could make a difference. Why, then, is this kind of education only concentrated in a pathway that most Malaysian students do not enter?

Where Civic Ignorance Shows Up

Civic ignorance rarely looks like ignorance. It looks like certainty without structure.

This quote by Dr Traylor mirrors the exact issue7. A person may know every major political personality, follow every controversy and speak confidently about what a political party is doing while still misunderstanding which institution made the decision they are angry about.

When authority is misunderstood, accountability becomes distorted.

We blame an MP for something outside an MP’s authority. We expect the federal government to solve something controlled by a state government. We blame an ethnic community for a decision made by a particular institution. We repeat a political party’s explanation because we do not know enough about the system to examine whether that explanation makes sense.

This is where emotions begin to carry much of the burden of interpreting Malaysian politics. Anger, fear, disappointment and insecurity are not necessarily irrational. They come from real experiences of inequality, exclusion or institutional failure. The problem arises when people are not given the knowledge needed to connect these emotions to the institutions, policies and decisions that produced them. Without that connection, frustration can easily be directed towards an entire ethnic or religious community, rather than the specific actors who hold responsibility.

Such explanations are effective because they provide clarity when the political system itself feels confusing. The threat explanation is effective because it gives people a clear victim, a clear threat and a clear protector. But they also prevent citizens from asking more challenging questions. Which institution made the decision? Who had the authority to change it? Was the outcome caused by a law, a policy, poor implementation or political neglect? Would another party actually have the power to deliver what it is promising?

This is why institutional literacy matters. It does not tell citizens which party to support. It does not ask citizens to trust institutions simply because those institutions exist. It gives them a better chance of identifying where decisions are made, who has responsibility for those decisions, and whether the political explanation being offered to them is reasonable.

This brings us back to the first-to-door problem. Weak civic education does not determine what young people will believe. It does something more subtle: it affects how dependent they are on other actors to explain politics to them. Parents may provide one explanation. Political parties provide another. Social media personalities provide another. Civil society provides another. The person who reaches the door first can influence the language through which later political events are understood.

In a political environment where race and religion remain powerful ways of mobilising voters, that matters. Many have been expected to build their own framework for understanding politics from an uneven and highly politicised information environment.

Some manage to do so through Pengajian Am, university, civil society or their own interest. Some rely on their families. Some enter political parties. And some simply keep politics at a distance because it feels too complicated or disconnected from their lives.

If civic education is meant to prepare people for citizenship, then this is the standard we should use to evaluate it. Not whether students can remember the definition of parliamentary democracy years after leaving school, but whether they know who has power over the problems affecting them, whether they can judge political claims with confidence, and whether they understand where they can go when they want something to change.

Exactly. I need context. I need someone to explain why this matters. Otherwise I don’t know whether what they’re saying is actually meaningful.

Violet Lee is a Researcher with IMAN Research.

Individually, they were fascinating discussions. Collectively, they forced me to confront some of my own assumptions about what it means to build a nation in a country as diverse as Malaysia. This essay isn’t a summary of IMAN’s findings; rather, my attempt to connect some of the threads that emerged across those twelve episodes, what they reveal about the state of Malaysia today, and how we can move forward.

The good news is that everybody surveyed, regardless of racial group, said they love the “multiness” of Malaysia—multiracial, multicultural, multilingual. This should not actually come as a surprise to anyone who doesn’t live their lives one headline or social media post at a time.

Multiculturalism (at the very least its symbolic aspects) has always been part of the Malaysian ethos. We get national holidays for Hari Raya, Deepavali, Chinese New Year and Christmas, each celebrated with equal gusto and enthusiasm for air pollution and keeping babies awake and crying at the stroke of midnight. There’s also the food everyone talks about, from your nasi lemaks and roti canais to char kway teows (basah included) and banana leaf rice (Banana Bro not included).

That’s the cheesy-meleleh story that we’re all familiar with. But something more profound has happened over the last half a century. As sociologist Abdul Rahman Embong argues, the New Economic Policy helped produce a large urban Malay middle class1, drawing millions from rural villages into towns and cities that had previously been severely overrepresented by the non-Malays, who had been integrated into the urban industrial economy during the colonial period.

Major Malaysian cities are literally more diverse today than they were in the romanticised 70s, by virtue of internal migration. Petaling Jaya, for example, comprised approximately only 20% Malays in the 1980s compared to 46% today2. On a day-to-day basis, we engage with each other across ethnic and religious lines today more than in the past, if only through the ordinary routines of daily life such as at work or at the marketplace.

I wish I could end my reflections here and conclude that everything is fine, that the Malaysian experience is exactly as the Cuti-Cuti Malaysia videos would have us believe. But that would be foolish when much of our cultural zeitgeist today is shaped by right-wing ethnocentric narratives that turn every issue into intense culture wars—temples, food, language, clothing and what it means to be Malaysian itself. Our politics has become so deeply racialised that almost everything, from car accidents to animal killings, is interpreted through the lens of communalism.

Too often, we frame these tensions as the product of irreconcilable differences or a clash of civilisations. However, history teaches us that societies gripped by insecurity and inequality become fertile ground for right-wing populists to thrive, redirecting material anxieties into the politics of fear, resentment and scapegoating.

Indeed, the study by IMAN research highlights something far more interesting: across racial lines, youths feel detached and disenfranchised from our politics. There is also a deep sense of insecurity, and everyone, regardless of racial group, is blackpilled into thinking they’ve drawn the shortest end of the stick. And while everyone celebrates the idea of multiculturalism, there are contradictions between the Malaysia we imagine and the Malaysia we actually experience.

Ethnic silos

One of the striking anecdotes from my interviews with IMAN is that some Malays highlighted how the “multicultural” country that’s talked about is not a reality of their lives. Even the public schools they attend are largely a single-race space. This may be baffling for a 30-year-old who grew up in Petaling Jaya or Subang, where intergroup mixing in public schools can feel like the most ordinary thing in the world. But that experience is far from universal. In fact, it’s mostly been experienced by the aspirational middle classes who make up a bulk of these neighbourhoods in the country.

While Malaysian cities are more diverse today than before, many Malaysians still grow up in towns and neighbourhoods where one ethnic group forms an overwhelming majority—either due to organic and colonial demographic distributions (e.g., in Kelantan, Malay-Bumiputeras make up 97% of the population) or in modern suburbs that came to be in recent decades.

Since the late 80s3, and the spread of neoliberalism across the world, the task of providing housing has largely been left to private developers. As with any business, they do not ask “What’s good for Malaysian citizens,” but “How do we market this to consumers?” They do not ask “How do we build communities that are balanced across classes and ethnicities?” Instead, they naturally ask, “How do we make the most profit?” In the process, ethnicity itself becomes a market category, with developers increasingly packaging neighbourhoods around the preferences of different ethnicised consumer groups.

So, instead of highly dense mixed neighbourhoods, we get clusters of gated communities sharply divided by class and/or race. This is further entrenched when government policy doesn’t swim against the tide but with it. For example, Shah Alam was explicitly designed by the government as a Malay-Muslim city when it was established in the 1980s4.

In those places, the Sekolah Kebangsaans often reflect this reality. The demographic makeup of these schools is further skewed by the presence of Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaans (Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools), which naturally draw students primarily from particular linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and religious schools, which attract families seeking an education grounded in Islamic teachings. Not to mention the proliferation of private schools, where access is determined by a family’s ability to pay and therefore inadvertently creates class stratification.

For many Malaysians interviewed by IMAN, meaningful interaction with people from other communities only begins later in life, at university (if they go to university) or in the workplace (if you’re working in an office and not a completely alienated delivery rider). That doesn’t necessarily make them intolerant; it simply means their everyday experience of Malaysia is very different from the one celebrated in our national narrative. Multiculturalism as a genuine political expression requires people to first exist and live in multicultural spaces.

Belonging

The conversations IMAN’s researchers had with Indian respondents revealed perhaps the deepest sense of alienation among any of the communities they interviewed. One respondent said: “I really love this country, but the country doesn’t love me back.”

Respondents expressed that feeling in different ways, but one issue surfaced over and over again: education. Many Indian youths felt that despite coming from poor backgrounds, doing everything they were told to do, studying hard and achieving good SPM results, they were still unable to secure places in matriculation or public universities. There were no specific education pathways and programmes that specifically addressed the structural disadvantages facing poor Indian students.

Several respondents also described Sekolah Kebangsaan as places where they did not always feel safe or valued. For example, one said that a school teacher asked them, “you k*ling atau India? Kalau India, kena buat baik.” Tamil schools, meanwhile, were described as places where many students felt safe and culturally affirmed, but also institutions that had been allowed to deteriorate through decades of underinvestment, with ageing facilities and limited resources.

For many, those conditions seemed to suggest that their future mattered less than others’. Even good initiatives such as the Malaysian Indian Blueprint, first introduced (but not implemented) by former Prime Minister Najib Razak, have been ignored by successive administrations. But this isn’t simply about pointing fingers at other communities. It is also about a deep disappointment with those who have claimed to represent Malaysian Indians over the decades. Many respondents felt that political representation had become transactional rather than transformative.

Religion in politics.

The survey by IMAN Research confirms what many of us already know, and the statistics reflect this too. Malaysia is a highly religious nation. Atheists make up a tiny group. Temples, churches, and mosques play an important role in most people’s lives. The difference lies not in whether people are religious, but in what role they believe religion should play in politics.

Among the non-Muslims surveyed, the prevailing view was straightforward: religion should be kept separate from government. For the Muslims youth surveyed, most agreed that religion should be an essential framework for political life and governance. However, digging deeper reveals some interesting nuances. While many surveyed did express the view that liberalism and secularism are “Western ideologies” that threaten Malaysia’s Islamic identity, they did not argue for a theocratic state. Rather, many believed that democracy and Islam are compatible and supported a broader application of Islamic values in public administration and politics.

That could mean different things to different people. The Muslim community in Malaysia is incredibly diverse politically and always has been. Some carry an ethnoreligious brand of politics, some Islamic-Socialism and everything in between. Likewise with other communities, where strands of Hindutva, Chinese chauvinism, and Christian nationalism, among other ideological currents, can also be found, as can more left-leaning and inclusive traditions.

Being left alone

One of the Chinese respondents said that they love multiculturalism but want to be left alone. This is both understandable and a tension at the heart of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, by definition, means there will be different ways of expressing faith, different ways of dressing, eating, and living. Most of us instinctively think this way: “Nobody, especially not a member of a different community, should tell me how to dress or what to eat.”

It is natural. Especially since in recent years in Malaysia, there are genuine anxieties expressed by non-Muslims about the apparent Islamisation of public spaces. For example, we’ve seen non-Muslims questioned for eating in public during Ramadan or told they should have dressed differently when making a police report.

On top of that, many Chinese youths, much like youths across racial categories, said they view politics as dirty and power-driven, with few believing it can improve their lives and even fewer able to name politicians they resonate with. When public life and politics feel uninspiring at best and burdensome at worst, people retreat further into their private lives.

However, saying communities should simply leave one another alone can also become a philosophy of disengagement, where people cease to see one another as partners in a shared national project. What happens when that mindset is carried into the world of business? Does it also mean landlords should be free to reject tenants purely because of their ethnicity?

A thriving multicultural society requires actively engaging with other communities, understanding their experiences and grievances. It asks us not merely to tolerate difference, but to empathise with it, even when doing so requires questioning our own assumptions. It requires us to see “their problem” as “our problem.”

What unites us

So far, I’ve written about the fault lines—the differences between the three biggest racial groups in Peninsula Malaysia that continue to shape our multicultural society. But after twelve conversations with IMAN’s researchers, the overwhelming feeling I came away with wasn’t despair. It was hope.

For all the differences between communities, one concern surfaced so consistently it almost rendered race secondary. One problem that transcends identity politics with the potential to be a tremendous unifying force: Development.

Whether respondents were Malay, Chinese or Indian; Muslim or non-Muslim, they repeatedly spoke about the same frustrations: stagnant wages, a shortage of quality jobs, weak infrastructure.

For many young Malaysians, success still means migration. The Klang Valley continues to attract a disproportionate share of investment and high-paying employment, while many smaller towns struggle to generate opportunities capable of retaining young people. Those fortunate enough to move to the capital are then confronted by a different set of problems: soaring housing costs, congestion and widening inequality.

While there have been major transformative improvements to public transportation in the Klang Valley, much remains to be desired, particularly in last-mile connectivity and pedestrian infrastructure. Highways continue to carve through neighbourhoods, making many communities hostile to pedestrians. And despite all the gleaming skyscrapers and transit lines, places like Taman Medan in Petaling Jaya or Paya Jaras in Sungai Buloh are reminders that prosperity has never been distributed evenly, even in Malaysia’s most developed region.

Outside the Klang Valley, things are grim. Rail networks are virtually non-existent, buses are often infrequent or unreliable, and multi-lane roads are still not the norm. I recently took a trip to Bahau in Negeri Sembilan to visit a friend who had just given birth. Long stretches of roads are still narrow and single-lane in each direction, and you regularly see cars overtaking into oncoming traffic. When I reached the neighbourhood, I found myself wondering, what would a 20/30-something-year-old do here? The answer was: very little. Most young people had already left in search of work and opportunity, including my friend who works in Singapore, who had only returned home for free premium post-maternity care and childcare services from her parents.

Development gaps and feelings of being left behind exist within communities everywhere. An Indian youth growing up in Sungai Siput experiences the same frustration of limited economic opportunities and having to leave home for better prospects. A Chinese resident in Yong Peng may similarly feel that despite Malaysia’s economic growth, their hometown has not seen much meaningful transformation.

Development and the lack thereof shape political attitudes. Take Penang, for example. IMAN’s researchers found that development in Penang is geographically uneven5. High-value industrial and commercial activity is concentrated around George Town, Bayan Lepas, Butterworth and areas connected by the Penang bridges. Northern mainland areas, on the other hand, remain largely agricultural with fewer modern economic opportunities and, frankly, fewer fun things for young people to do. This creates a sense of resentment among those on the northern mainland towards those on the island. The resentment deepens when economic geography overlaps with ethnic demographics.

When the resentment takes political form, it looks something like this:

Constituencies that have benefited most from development have generally remained Pakatan Harapan strongholds, while those left on the margins have increasingly backed Perikatan Nasional, not because of Islamist ideology per se, but as backlash due to development neglect.

So what kind of political project do we need?

Before answering that, it’s worth recognising what we already have. Many of the identity faultlines that we tend to wrestle over, the questions that keep us up at night surrounding language, race, religion and what it means to be Malaysian have already been accounted for in the Malaysian Constitution.

Worried about the role of religion in politics? Our Constitution was never designed around the idea of a completely secular state, nor was it intended to create a theocracy. It recognises Islam as the religion of the Federation while simultaneously guaranteeing that other religions may be practised in peace and harmony. Likewise, concerns over the erosion of mother-tongue education often ignore that the Constitution, together with subsequent legislation (Education Act 1996), protects the right of communities to establish and maintain schools teaching in languages other than Malay.

Even the highly politicised Article 153 is less radical than either its fiercest defenders or harshest critics sometimes make it out to be. It grants the Yang di-Pertuan Agong the responsibility of safeguarding the special position of the Malays and natives of Sabah and Sarawak while, in the very same provision, safeguarding the legitimate interests of other communities. Whether successive governments have honoured that spirit in good faith is, of course, another matter entirely.

More broadly, we often ask what it means to be Malaysian as though there exists a single, definitive national identity waiting to be discovered.

But what if being Malaysian is less a rigid cultural-identity project than an ambitious constitutional one?

This is something I take from authors like Sunil Khilnani in The Idea of India6. Khilnani argues that India’s identity was never meant to rest on a single language, religion or culture. Instead, it was conceived as a constitutional project that sought to build a single political community from multiple civilisations and immense diversity. India wasn’t founded on the claim that “we are already one people” culturally, linguistically or ethnically. Rather, it was built on the aspiration that many different peoples could share one political home (nation-state).

I see Malaysia as a similar constitutional project. I don’t imagine a Malaysia a hundred years from now where everyone has naturally assimilated into (or congregate behind) one language, one culture, or one identity. Nor do I think that should be the goal. Our multilingual society (including our multilingual school system) isn’t a temporary inconvenience on the road to nation-building. It is part of what Malaysia is. What binds us together isn’t cultural uniformity but a shared commitment to the constitutional project that enables such diversity to exist in the first place: Parliament, federalism, democratic participation.

The tragedy is that we have largely allowed this constitutional tradition to be monopolised by ethnoreligious-nationalist forces. Too often, progressives (a term I use loosely) approach the Constitution defensively, constantly having to explain that whatever policy they propose is, in fact, constitutional. Meanwhile, those who invoke the Constitution the loudest are not always those most committed to its spirit. We rarely see, for example, PAS President Hadi Awang being put on the defensive when he describes the Constitution as “tulisan warisan penjajah.”7

That should change.

The Constitution shouldn’t merely be something progressive forces retreat behind when accused of being anti-Malay, anti-Islam or anti-whatever-the-outrage-of-the-week-is. It should be proudly repoliticised as the foundation of what it means to be Malaysian. When cultural differences are weaponised to divide us, it should be the ethnoreligious forces that are forced to explain how their politics squares with the constitutional settlement that has allowed this diverse nation to function for nearly seven decades.

However, while the constitution can provide the framework for identity and coexistence, it cannot by itself answer the deeper question of shared aspirations Malaysians are working towards. People need to feel that this nation is delivering something tangible and material: dignity, security, upward mobility and a better future for all. A society that guarantees material security, collective provision, and the means for everyone to flourish leaves little room for the fear and insecurity that divide working people.

If you spend too much time on social media, as I do, you’ve probably seen how much of it over the past several months has been defined by constant fear-mongering about and hostilities towards ethnic minorities and refugees (Kuil Haram, anti-Rohingya, you name it). And then LRT 3 launched, and that was all everybody was talking about for days on end.

Literally nobody cared that viral food maps on where to find the best Bak Kut Teh in Klang and the best Ayam Gepuk in Seksyen 7 of Shah Alam were circulating social media simultaneously. There was no great culture war about Haram/Halal, only excited people talking about the reduced congestion on the Federal Highway and how LRT 3 is the coolest thing in the entire galaxy since the invention of Nasi Lemak.

Building the future

What has been sorely missing from Malaysian politics over the past decade is one that captures this sentiment—an ambitious politics of development nationalism. Given that we’re a developing country, the promise should be straightforward: the Malaysia your children inherit should be recognisably better than the Malaysia you grew up in. Better connected. Better housed. Better educated. Better jobs.

Development should not merely be an economic programme left to policy wonks to nerd out over. It should be the core of a shared story that binds a nation together. Development should be emotionally narrativised as the anchor of our cultural and political conversation. Densely populated modern cities, affordable housing, flying cars, hundreds of kilometres of railways, and a robust education system should be packaged as part of a larger emotional story about what it means to be Malaysian.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s era was marked by serious problems, including cronyism, concentration of power, and massive democratic backsliding. It is also undeniable that his political project (Wawasan 2020) was deeply tied to the idea of infrastructure and modernising Malaysia, and people loved it. Highways, airports, universities, industrial capacity, a national car project and Putrajaya became physical symbols of a largely rural country galloping into the future. The ambition wasn’t communicated only through policy papers. It was embedded into the language of Wawasan 2020 itself.

Najib Razak’s administration ultimately became defined by one of the largest corruption scandals in the world, rightfully and unfortunately so. At the same time, his 1Malaysia political project is infinitely memorable and was also directly tied to “1Malaysia clinics and Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia. Similarly, infrastructural developments like the UTC (Urban Transformation Centre), national rail projects, and the CBD (commercial-business district) development”8. Projects like the MRT, the expanded LRT network, the ETS (and the upcoming East Coast Rail Link) changed the way millions of Malaysians travelled, experienced their cities and imagined the country’s future. I myself take the MRT to work every single day and have not driven back to my hometown of Johor Bahru since the launch of the southbound ETS.

We also need to build a lot more housing. If we are serious about building a multicultural society, we cannot simply hope that people from different backgrounds will magically encounter one another. We have to create the conditions that make those encounters possible. That means constructing far more affordable and social housing in well-connected neighbourhoods like Damansara, TTDI and Subang Jaya rather than pushing lower-income families to the urban fringes. A city where teachers, nurses, Grab drivers, accountants and lawyers all live in the same communities is not just a fairer city; it is a more genuinely diverse one.

The strongest antidote to ethnic silos is often not another slogan about unity and kindness, but a neighbourhood where children grow up playing football together, attend the same schools, complain about the same traffic jams and take the same trains. If you want people to vote like someone from Subang Jaya, then you either have to create more Subang Jayas or make it easier for more people to migrate into Subang Jaya. Or both.

Instead of weaponising vernacular schools, we need a politics that strengthens all our school systems (including empowering the teachers in all of them) through meaningful and increased funding. Politics should facilitate this narratively and create an environment in which more non-Indians feel comfortable sending their children to SJK(T)s, more non-Chinese students choose SJK(C)s, and where SKs are the gold standard that would make middle-class parents wonder why they’re spending RM20,000 a year sending their kids to private schools to learn the same national syllabus.

Too often, our education debates revolve around quotas, language or school streams. Those questions matter, but they should not eclipse a far more urgent one: are we expanding opportunities for every Malaysian to pursue meaningful tertiary education? We need more high-quality TVET institutions and public colleges and universities so that whether you’re a Malay kid from a fishing village in Pahang, an Indian kid whose dad is a lorry driver, or a Chinese kid growing up among the paddy fields of Sekinchan, your family’s circumstances do not determine the ceiling of your ambitions. A left-leaning political project should be obsessed with producing more engineers, nurses, technicians, scientists, entrepreneurs and skilled workers because a richer, more productive society depends on it.

Of course, it would be pointless to have a highly educated workforce without having quality jobs for them to pursue. Again, this requires ambition. It requires the state to build the infrastructure and institutions that attract high-value firms and anchor them within the domestic economy. We also need to build industries that create opportunities for Malaysians to move up the value chain. In some areas, we are already doing this (e.g. semiconductors), but even then we do not narrativise these efforts with emotional conviction. Sometimes what’s missing isn’t an industrial policy but the politicisation (or active re-politicisation) of the policy to capture public imagination. Politics should inspire people to feel that we’re building local productive capacities, industries and brands together.

Apart from toxic identity politics, for far too long these have been the buzzwords that defined our politics: 1MDB, Najib Razak, institutional reform, fiscal discipline. The importance of fighting corruption tooth and nail or the need for a more robust parliament should never be downplayed. But these should be seen as a means to an end, not the end-all, be-all. People don’t wake up every morning thinking of cleaner procurement systems, improved governance indicators, or having three ballot papers instead of two. People go to sleep dreaming of a better life.

Dashran Yohan is a broadcast journalist with BFM 89.9, a business and current affairs station, where he hosts a variety of shows including Beyond the Ballot Box and Top 5 at 5. His areas of focus include political economy, social justice, and geopolitics.

But what often goes underfunded, and where the conversation becomes difficult, is the funding of civil society. I spend time among civil society. These are organisations dedicated to improving and enriching democratic life, whether through youth empowerment, human and legal rights advocacy, or social integration. However, funding has become increasingly difficult in this space. Many rely on foreign entities, like philanthropists, international or regional organisations, or foreign missions. Last year, when the U.S. government restructured its international programmes, Malaysian human rights NGOs were among those whose operations suffered1.

There is a certain precarity for those operating in the civil society space. The work done, though important to Malaysia’s democratic health, is also deemed politically sensitive. These are organisations and programmes unlikely to get support from the government, and in some instances, would be accused of laundering a foreign ‘liberalising’ agenda through a universal cause2. Nor is the vulnerability limited to independent organisations. In 2023, a Ministry of Youth interfaith programme, Jom Ziarah, was cancelled after right-wing actors claimed it ‘risked’ confusing Muslim youths3. If a government agency cannot keep its social cohesion programme alive under ministerial protection, then the hesitancy of private funders begins to look like a rational choice.

None of which is to say that Malaysians don’t care for democratic life. During BERSIH’s heyday, pre-2018, the coalition received donations that reached RM2.6 million4. This is no small feat. Malaysians were willing, despite personal financial hardship, to donate for a cause they felt was bigger than themselves.

But Malaysians tend to equate democratic citizenship to politics. Both are inter-related, but one is about developing the landscape that the other operates on. And most of us tend not to understand this difference. Our own history has shaped us to understand public contributions as institutional. For Malaysian-Chinese, it is the funding of education institutions, chambers of commerce and clan associations. For Muslims, it is zakat—the state-run architecture that governs how public monies are distributed; who is deserving, and what gets funded. In both cases, someone else decided what ‘proper’ giving looks like, and it’s a decision we inherited.

In this regard, most Malaysians don’t think of funding an independent news outfit, or a legal aid centre, or an electoral watchdog, as an act of democratic or communal obligation. They think of it as politics. And politics, in the worldview that has been carefully cultivated, is a domain for political parties—meaning the domain of the state, or those who aspire to control it. The public hesitancy to fund civic life, then, is understandable although regrettable. But it is worth returning to this question of obligation.

I recently moderated a panel discussion for Architects of Diversity’s Simposium Harmoni. One of the questions I posed to Nazir Razak, who ran CIMB Foundation through its active years—the period of MOZEK, an integration programme5—was ‘why does corporate Malaysia fund CSR programmes while stepping back from social cohesion?’. His answer was structural: ESG and climate-linked initiatives attract tax incentives. Social cohesion, unity and integration programmes attract none. CSR spending faces hard caps. The fiscal architecture rewards one category of giving and has no accommodation for the other.

This question of philanthropic responsibility brings me to Ahmet Kuru, author of Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment, specifically the chapter in which he dissects the relationship between state control, philanthropy, and civic life.

The Islamic Golden Age: the funding of civic life and how the state co-opted intellectual discourse

The Islamic Golden Age—the civilisational flourish between the 8th and 11th centuries that produced algebra, medicine, philosophy, and some of the most sophisticated legal reasoning in human history—Kuru argues, is not built on state patronage6. It was built on the independence of scholars from the state and, more importantly, funded by private capital. Both Abu Hanifa and Ahmad ibn Hanbal—founders of the Hanafi and Hanbali schools, respectively7—were merchants. Private capital allowed them distance from the state, which gave them the necessary independence to produce real intellectual inquiry. The funding of civic life was not limited to just scholarship, and not just by the scholar-merchant class alone.

Kuru, drawing on Bryan Turner, describes a merchant class enriched by the expansion of trade across the Muslim world that put its money into philosophy and the arts as readily as into religious learning—and into mathematics, since bookkeeping and accounting gave merchants a practical stake. Their patronage of artists produced something new for the mediaeval world: in Oleg Grabar’s words, “an art of the bourgeoisie in contrast to the art of the church or of an aristocracy.”

What eventually followed, unfortunately, maps loosely, but instructively, onto where we are now. Kuru identifies two structural shifts undertaken by the Seljuk Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. The first was economic via iqta—a system of land revenue assignments and tax farming designed to bring the economy under military control. The second was institutional, through the establishment of Nizamiyyas, a network of state-led madrasahs where Islamic scholars became state servants; eventually enacting an orthodoxy, legitimising state power, and marginalising rationalist theologians and scholars (to the point of declaring them heretics).

The story of Islamic intellectual decline, in this reading, is what happens when private capital exits the business of funding civic life and independent thought, and the state fills the vacuum.

The Malaysian parallel: politics, business and civic disengagement

Malaysian private wealth is inseparable from the state, operating in a political economy where large private capital is threaded through government-linked companies, licensing regimes, and the contracts and concessions that require political relationships to maintain8. A Malaysian millionaire who funds a watchdog organisation investigating government contracts is restructuring their relationship with the entities that determine whether their business survives. The money that goes to orphanages or hospitals stays away from civil society because the consequences of the two are entirely different. A 2025 Architects of Diversity report9 found that the bulk of Malaysian CSR funding went to education access, healthcare and economic empowerment; categories that carry no political cost.

Something like iqta is at work here, although not in the same direction. The Seljuks captured private wealth and redirected it; Malaysia’s arrangement leaves private wealth in private hands but ties its survival to the state—achieving the same end by gentler means. Either way, independent patronage of civil society becomes costly, and the space is left to whoever is willing to bear its cost. Architects of Diversity’s own review of the field found that Malaysia has over 100 active foundations and CSR arms but “less than a handful” consistently invest in racial integration, interfaith dialogue, or community bridging. Their survey stopped at social cohesion; nobody has done the equivalent study for democratic capacity building, legal aid, political watchdogs, or election monitoring, which is itself telling about how unexamined this space is.

Even the government—the Ministry of National Unity, which claims authority over this space—received RM711 million (0.17%) of the 2025 federal budget; the smallest allocation of any ministry, behind Digital at 0.31%, Science and Technology at 0.30% and Youth and Sports at 0.27%. The space for civic institutions is both monopolised and neglected.

It is important, however, not to read this as solely the responsibility of Malaysian philanthropists. The reading of Kuru’s argument isn’t meant to rest solely on the idea of (independent) private capital funding civic life, although that is certainly its most salient lesson. What we could learn from the Islamic Golden Age and the merchant-civic life relationship is this sustained social obligation to the flourishing of society. This obligation is diffuse by nature, which is precisely the problem. A functioning civil society is a common good: everyone benefits from an electoral watchdog or an independent press whether they contributed financially or not, and nobody’s individual withdrawal visibly breaks anything. So those with capital decline because the cost is theirs and the benefit is everyone’s, and the rest of us decline because someone else surely will—and because, increasingly, we doubt it would matter if we did.

A few weeks ago, my colleague argued in her essay that Malaysian-Chinese youths were politically apathetic and attributed it to the community’s ‘Pragmatism’ mindset that valued economic life (and funded education and commerce institutions), but abandoned democratic citizenship. It is worth acknowledging that the Malaysian-Chinese community has been anything but politically disengaged—they have been involved in major political incidents over the decades such as Ops Lalang10 and BERSIH11. However, there is also a deepening ‘pragmatic realisation’ that Chinese political power is limited, and will always be subject to Malay-Muslim majoritarian politics. This realisation is largely correct, and the generational apathy that follows from it is the rational response rather than a moral failing.

Taken more broadly, Malaysians do not see the value of investing in civil society because they believe that changing the system (politically and democratically) is futile, short of voting in political representatives who might do a good job tipping the scales in their favour. That belief came at a cost. Malaysians donated millions to BERSIH and got the historic change in government they ‘paid’ for. What followed was several years of political quagmire, defections and collapsed coalitions. The ‘ROI’ failed to hold its shape, and a generation of Malaysians drew the obvious conclusion. The problem with this is that the conclusion is self-fulfilling.

Every ringgit withdrawn from civil society weakens the institutions that would have made the next attempt more effective—which makes the next attempt look more futile still. Meanwhile, the funding environment tightens from the other direction: competitive grants, narrowing scope, and international funders who are increasingly discerning about the Global South.

So consider what we have in front of us. The government claims authority over national unity and funds it last, behind every other ministry it operates. The tax code rewards corporations for planting trees or introducing a child to reading, but offers nothing for building trust between Malaysians. Nazir Razak put it plainly: corporate Malaysia goes where the incentives are. And of the hundred-odd foundations with capital to give, a handful fund the work of holding this country together. This is a set of arrangements, built over decades, that makes some forms of giving cheap and others costly—and it has worked exactly as designed.

Malaysians care about democratic life; BERSIH’s RM2.6 million donations over a decade ago are proof of it. The question is whether we will fund the institutions that do the work between elections: the checks on power, the independent reporting that keeps us informed, and the help extended to citizens the state failed. That isn’t charity, and neither is it politics. It is what we owe each other, and meeting it is what makes us democratic citizens rather than voters.

Aziff Azuddin is the Research Director of IMAN Research.

For the past 13 years in the peace process, Malaysia has changed its facilitator, from experienced diplomats to individuals with police or military experience, to mediate between the Thai government and Patani insurgents. Malaysia plays an important role in the Patani peace process, as the country shares a border with Southern Thailand and connects Malaysia to mainland Southeast Asia.

The question now is whether there has been any significant progress in the peace process itself. Negotiations between the two are expected to resume in September 20261. Can we hope for some significant milestone to be reached in the peace process in September 2026?

Why is Malaysia the facilitator in the peace process?

Malaysia has become an important country in the peace process between Patani insurgents and the Thai government for several reasons. The first is due to the shared border between Thailand and Malaysia. Kelantan and Southern Thailand were separated only by a small river, which, during low tide and drought, could be crossed on foot2. IMAN’s engagement with individuals from border communities in Kelantan shows that this close proximity affected how they perceived borders and interacted with one another.

Rather than seeing rivers as divisive spaces that separate two communities, some just see them as part of their everyday lives. I remember an interaction with a scholar of Kelantan border-community origin, who shared how normal it is for people across the river to talk about their daily lives, from lunch menus to simple visits. In fact, 2 months ago, 34 school children who were detained by the police for illegal crossings were said to own a Malaysian identity card and attend schooling in Malaysia while living across the Sungai Golok border3.

Southern Thailand and Kelantan share cultural proximity through a similar language, as the Kelantanese and Patani Malay dialects are mutually intelligible. The only difference between these two languages that Patani Malay continues to use the Jawi script, while Kelantanese Malay has mainly shifted to the romanised script, as Malaysia stopped teaching the Malay language in the Jawi script in 19664. The Kelantan state government still permits the use of the Jawi script in public spaces, advertising, and on road signs.

This cultural proximity between the Patani people and Malaysia has led to some interesting migration patterns of Patani youth to Malaysia. In research conducted by IMAN in 2022, most of the Patani youth interviewed chose to migrate to Malaysia due to cultural proximity between Patani Malay and Malaysia, as well as other influences such as the existing network of Patani communities in Malaysia. These close ties between Patani Malay and Malaysian Malays show not only the importance of Malaysia’s involvement in the peace process, but also the deep, long-standing connectivity between the two groups that cannot be separated by a national border.

Malaysians lack knowledge of the conflict in Southern Thailand

Despite the shared culture, ethnicity and existing Malaysians living across the border, Malaysian knowledge of the conflict happening in Southern Thailand is surprisingly low. If you ask Malay youth anything about Southern Thailand and the current conflict, I doubt they would know more than they do about the holiday hotspot in Bangkok. In 2025, Thailand received 4.5 million visitors, compared to 4.47 million from China5. This makes Malaysia the top country of origin for tourists visiting Thailand in 2025. Furthermore, the Patani insurgents are of Malay-muslim ethnicity, similar to the majority ethnic in Peninsular Malaysia. And yet, the Malay brotherhood spirit doesn’t seem to apply to the Patani insurgents among Malay Muslims in Malaysia.

Much of the contribution and involvement of Malaysian Malay Muslims towards Malays in Southern Thailand is based on a humanitarian approach, rather than diving deeper into the conflict. For example, during the IMAN Research project on the Patani migrant community in Malaysia, we connected with the Patani community through a senior leader of a major Islamic organisation who often led humanitarian relief missions to Southern Thailand.

Most of these organisations’ activities focus on providing humanitarian assistance and educational support for the Patani Malay community in Southern Thailand. Not much has been done to utilise the Malaysian Malay’s close cultural proximity and long-standing bond for peacebuilding in Southern Thailand. Perhaps, this approach might have been influenced by ASEAN’s core principles of non-interference, in which ASEAN member states always emphasised not interfering with member states’ domestic issues, except for certain circumstances, like Myanmar, where political instability is happening in its territory, resulting in regional spillover effects, especially on refugees and asylum seekers.

Comparing the current Patani Peace Process progress to the Mindanao Peace Process

In 2023, some Patani insurgent groups voiced frustration that the Peace Process has been going in circles, with the focus always returning to reducing violence6. Three years later, in 2026, the focus of the negotiation remains on reducing violence, backed by feedback received by the Thai government during the public consultation session7. While there has been a reduction in violence from 1,400 incidents in 20078 to 503 in 20259, it remains unclear whether this reduction can be attributed to the ongoing peace process. Over the years, the momentum of the peace process between Patani insurgents and the Thai government has occasionally been disrupted by political instability and government changes, on either the Thai or Malaysian side, as the facilitator.

In comparison, the Mindanao Peace Process started in 1976, with a few government collapses in between (President Marcos’ downfall in 1986), the breakdown of the existing Tripoli Agreement in 1979, the establishment of the MNLF splinter group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 1984, before the resumption of talks between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and President Corazon Aquino from 1986 to 199210.

During negotiations between the MNLF and President Aquino, the Jeddah Accord (1987) was signed, followed by the Philippine government’s Organic Act (1989), which established the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao via plebiscite, a move the MNLF rejected. The first stage of the peace process between the MNLF and the Philippine government concluded in 1996 with the Final Agreement on the Implementation of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement, followed by the repeal of the Organic Act. In 1997, the second stage of the peace process started between MILF and the Philippine government, mediated by Malaysia, with a framework and guidelines on the conduct of the negotiations agreed in 200111.

Current state of the peace process

Clearly, the Mindanao Peace Process also took decades to reach the final agreement in 201412. Yet the peace process saw several significant advances before the final agreement was reached almost 40 years ago. Meanwhile, scepticism persists within the Patani Peace Process among the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) ranks, with discussions in 2022 suggesting that the main insurgent groups in Southern Thailand might have relinquished their claim to independence, instead aiming to continue negotiations under the Unitary State of Thailand13. Despite the scepticism, BRN’s relinquishment of its independence claim and agreement to negotiate under the Unitary State of Thailand might be a positive sign of progress in the peace process. Both parties have agreed on a roadmap towards a peace agreement in 2023, which includes finding a political solution to the conflict14.

Some light at the end of the tunnel?

The peace process between the Patani insurgents and the Thai government seems to have picked up pace, with some structure in place for negotiations over the past few years. However, scepticism thrown on the relinquishment of the independence claim for Patani cannot be underestimated. This scepticism does not only come from within the various factions inside BRN, but also from other insurgent groups such as the Patani United Liberation Organisation (PULO), which organised bombings during Ramadhan in 2022 for being excluded from the peace process15. The continued exclusion of other insurgent groups from the peace process risks fallout from the peace agreement that both parties, the Thai and the BRN, seek to achieve in the future. While there is some light at the end of the tunnel now, the journey still seems so far away.

Nadia Lukman is the Operations Director of IMAN Research.

Rishi Sunak’s very position at the top post at 10 Downing Street was a representation of a British Indian who had made it to the upper echelons of the predominantly white British elite policymakers. There was this weight of having a British South Asian lead the country. The underlying feeling of pride and hope that things would be different under his premiership, the assumption that having a leader who looked like you could advocate for your rights.

The reality, however, was far from this. Rishi Sunak grew up in these elite circles. The leader of the Conservative Party at the time, and by default the Prime Minister, did not automatically mean he would advocate for the South Asian community or immigrants. He had a strong negative stance on both legal and illegal migration into the UK. Furthermore, while many British citizens struggled with the cost-of-living crisis and faced a 25% tax rise, his family was subjected to financial scrutiny during this time when his wife claimed non-domicile status, meaning she did not have to pay UK taxes on income earned elsewhere. This was a painfully stark distinction of class as a barrier that does not transcend ethnicity.

Rishi Sunak’s case raises the question of whether there is truly a need to celebrate representation and for leaders to be advocates for their respective communities. While there is merit in coming from a certain ethnic group and understanding their challenges, this painfully narrow worldview further creates distinctions among ethnic groups. It then becomes excusable for policymakers and leaders to opt out of protecting the interests of disenfranchised groups, especially in a multi-ethnic country. This leaves the community in the lurch, relying solely on these leaders to look out for their communities. It creates divisiveness and fragmentation. An every-man-for-himself mentality in political spheres can be detrimental to smaller communities as a whole in the long run. The need to elect leaders based on their ethnicity or race seems redundant, especially when looking at my own country, which is so deeply entrenched in racial politics.

Since the country’s inception, Malaysia has largely been governed by race-based parties. For the Indian community, the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) was part of the Barisan Nasional alliance and was considered the party that advocated for the community. Following changes in government and among Malaysian Indian political representatives over the decades, there was hope that things would change for the Indian community. From the fragmentation of the colonial divide-and-rule to now, not much has changed for segments of the community who have been left behind and not advocated for. Moreover, long-standing issues within the community have not been addressed. Decades of false promises and pretend narratives of change and reform have left Malaysian Indian youths feeling apathetic, disillusioned and defeated.

While interviewing Malaysian Indian youths for IMAN’s Kami Orang Sini Juga project, my co-researcher and I asked the youths to reflect on their feelings towards political representation in Malaysia, specifically whether they felt that enough was being done by these leaders. Many reiterated their frustrations and apathy towards politics in general, but when describing Indian political representation, there were two main camps: there is not enough of it and that it does not even matter. The dominant narrative being the latter. It is a thread that could unravel the very rigid ideas of race-based parties in Malaysian politics and the weight of youths’ sentiment for the future.

When describing a lack of political representation for Indian youth, they pointed to insufficient leaders in parliament who looked out for the community’s interests. Disproportionate representation by gender and age were two arguments that came up in our conversations, along with a need to see this change. Names like Kasthuri Patto, a former Member of Parliament, were cited as examples of leaders who pushed for change and made a substantial difference. There was also a call for young blood in politics. In this regard, representation was important to the youths.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that there is no clear push among youths who need to see Indian leaders in politics. This is in part due to the fact that they have felt let down by the previous and existing political representatives, who focus too closely on niche issues which are not representative of the entire Indian community and the various sub-ethnic groups, class stratification and their challenges. The picture painted by youths is such:

I haven’t heard of an Indian politician who’s doing a good job, to be honest. I don’t think anyone has that reputation.

When asked about Indian representatives and if they were doing enough for the community, another youth said:

Personally, I only see these faces [Indian MPs] during Deepavali.

This is the stark reality of how Malaysian Indian politicians are viewed: as figureheads to appease the community. Around the time of community festivals, there is a push by political parties and politicians to go on the ground and ensure the public in the constituency remembers their names and faces. It banks on positive feelings within the community during a celebratory time. They are faces meant to provide comfort and a false narrative that the Indian community is being taken care of to garner their votes.

Again, the long-standing issues such as quota systems, which hinder youths from educational opportunities, fragmentation in the Indian community, negative perceptions of Indians, gangsterism, high drop-out rates, and more have gone unaddressed. The Malaysian Indian Blueprint, introduced during Najib Razak’s premiership1, was intended to address these issues. However, the plan was shelved, and the fact that youths are still addressing these concerns means we are still at square one. Currently, the Malaysian Indian Transformation Unit (MITRA) is meant to alleviate problems in the community. However, the minimal budget allocation and rapid leadership changes have been criticised in the past by MITRA’s current chairman, MP Prabhakharan. The feelings of frustration are evident when speaking to youths who are perceptive and view programmes and leadership within the Indian community as a means to an end for their vote. As described by one youth:

“It’s just temporary happiness. Sometimes from what I feel is being given not because they want to help us, but because it’s definitely heavily affecting how we vote for the government in the future.”

This frustration towards Indian representation translates into how they feel towards future elections. Youths who have never voted before feel a sense of withdrawal from politics and disillusionment that nothing will change. They are politically aware. From a young age, many were told stories of struggles facing the Indian community and the barriers they face, especially those who are at a socioeconomic disadvantage. It is for this reason that they feel this detachment. Youths have been dismissed as apathetic and uncaring towards politics, but this stems from generational influences as well as their own experiences of being constantly let down by leaders who look like them and promise them the world. They are left with the needle moving less than an inch when there is still a mile to go. Youths are more perceptive than we give them credit for.

The rose coloured glasses have come off. Youths identify many of the Indian leaders as running on empty platforms with nothing but their ethnic background to appease the community and pacify them. Representation no longer matters here if there is nothing being done. Indian leaders who have a seat at the table yet do not push for change do not carry meaning in the eyes of Indian youths. Many look to leaders who will look out for all Malaysians, regardless of race. Gone are the days when the Indian community could be swayed by the allure of having an Indian leader. Youths are tired of hollow, tokenistic representation. Race-based parties are a relic of the past, with youths today looking for strong leaders who will champion their rights regardless of ethnicity. The realities of having an MP, not of Indian ethnic background, representing their constituency and the Indian community have paid off for some youths:

I mean, it doesn’t matter whatever background she is Malay or whatever. She’s like helping everyone. So I’m lucky that we voted for somebody like that. It’s all like betting, right?

Shaleen Surendra is a Researcher with IMAN Research.

“Just focus on making money.”
“Politics is dirty.”
“Results matter more than ideology.”
“Economic growth is what really matters.”

Pragmatism is frequently presented as rationality, efficiency, and realism.

But what if it has become a self-justifying narrative and comforting delusion?

Pragmatism Was Once Necessary

Over a century ago, Chinese migrants arrived in Malaya under conditions of extreme uncertainty. They were escaping war, poverty, instability, and political chaos back in China. Survival was not guaranteed, and many died on their way here. Under such conditions, pragmatism made perfect sense.

The goal was simple: one must find a job to survive, prioritise feeding their families, build stability for their lives and further create opportunities for future generations. Confucian values, long embedded in Chinese culture1, reinforced this logic, which emphasised filial piety, moral responsibility and the prioritisation of collective family interests over individual ambitions2.

Within this context, Chun termed Southeast Asian Chinese migrants as “pariah capitalism”—a minority group with limited opportunities in politics often turns to trade and business, becoming highly successful merchants3. Hence, economic achievement became both a practical survival strategy and a culturally reinforced expression of family responsibility.

Back then, Chinese-Malayan society had limited institutional support from the British colonial administration. They relied heavily on family networks, clan associations, and community organisations for economic and social security, and even established Chinese education institutions. In this context, pragmatism was a successful philosophy.

However, the problem is that many Malaysian Chinese still operate—over a century later—with the same mindset, despite living in a completely different context.

The Conditions Changed, The Mindset Didn’t

The average Malaysian Chinese today does not face the same existential threats their ancestors did in the 19th and 20th centuries. There are more opportunities: robust education, better social mobility, and more political participation than ever before. Yet many young Malaysian Chinese continue to feel that the educational opportunities are not distributed fairly, reinforcing a broader perception that the system remains stacked against them. Under this context, many still approach society through the same inherited lens: survive, earn, adapt, then move on. It’s a cycle that repeats itself.

The result is a community that is economically capable but often uncomfortable engaging with questions of power, governance, and nation-building, especially among the youth. Pragmatism becomes the default answer to every problem.

Instead of asking, “Why does this happen?”, it becomes: “Does it affect me? If yes, how do I navigate around it?” Obstacles are treated as hurdles to be navigated rather than problems to be challenged. In such a mindset, understanding and confronting problems are almost seen as idealistic rather than reasonable. As a result, the objective is not to reform institutions or reshape society, but to minimise personal risk, secure opportunities, and continue making progress despite the circumstances.

It needs to be said: this observation does not represent all Chinese youths in Malaysia.

Across the country, many young Chinese are doing the difficult work by actively building their communities, volunteering, and organising local initiatives.

However, they are not the majority.

For many others, immediate concerns like education, employment, family and financial security naturally take priority. In such an environment, they might not consider an alternative perspective to see how they can shape it or take part in nation-building more meaningfully. Because when individual success is the most visible path forward, it is hardly surprising that pragmatism becomes the default response to almost everything.

The Hidden Cost of Pragmatism

At first glance, pragmatism sounds particularly rational and intelligent. However, every worldview has its trade-offs. The trade-off for excessive pragmatism is that it trains people to adapt to systems rather than improve them. When institutions fail, pragmatists learn workarounds. When policies are unfair, pragmatists find alternative routes. When politics becomes dysfunctional, pragmatists disengage.

“It’s fine if a politician corrupts, it’s normal. As long as it doesn’t affect how he looks, it’s normal,” said one of our interviewees.

This reflects the Chinese saying, 天下乌鸦一般黑 [all crows are black], the idea that everyone in power is fundamentally the same; corrupt and self-serving. Over time, the system remains unchanged. Because of this, the Chinese community begins to conflate coping mechanisms with solutions, because they are considered naive.

Victimhood, Pragmatism and Moral Virtue

Ironically, pragmatism and victimhood often reinforce each other. Many Malaysian Chinese simultaneously hold two beliefs:

1. The system is unfair.

2. Nothing meaningful can be done about it.

Perhaps this is where pragmatism begins to ‘self-corner’ us.

When we stop believing that society can change, we naturally focus on changing our own circumstances instead. We work harder, earn more, move elsewhere, or simply keep our heads down. These choices are understandable. Many of our parents and grandparents survived because they made them.

But if individual adaptation becomes our only response, something important is lost. We stop seeing ourselves as a people who can shape the future together; we become spectators of our own society. What was once a survival strategy slowly turns into withdrawal.

Politics becomes somebody else’s responsibility.

Nation-building becomes somebody else’s responsibility.

The future becomes somebody else’s responsibility.

The only remaining task is personal survival.

At its extreme, pragmatism, coupled with economic success, can evolve from a survival strategy into proof of personal moral virtue. This interpretation is broadly consistent with Prof Chuah’s findings that Malaysian Chinese place greater emphasis on free enterprise and hard work than other Malaysian ethnic groups, and potentially express higher levels of discrimination toward other ethnic communities4.

This dynamic can also be observed in everyday inter-ethnic interactions. As one interviewee reflected:

“[The] Chinese said they feel oppressed. But when they see a Malay or Indian doing Wushu (Martial Arts) or Chinese calligraphy or playing 24 Festive Drum, they’ll say, ‘Wow, that Malay/Indian person is impressive. Not bad. He’s very open-minded.’ But when a Chinese wants to learn Tulisan Jawi, or better understand their [other] cultures, they see it as self-deprecating. Isn’t that a double standard?”

The interviewee’s observation shows how cultural exchange may be evaluated by different moral standards depending on who is participating. It could be extremely dangerous when a survival strategy turns into a form of moral superiority that fuels discrimination toward other ethnic communities.

Chinese Youth Feel Politically Homeless

My colleague described this pragmatism as an expired coping mechanism. Indeed, the youths inherited the old generation’s coping mechanisms but not its mission.

Our interviews suggest that younger Malaysian Chinese are beginning to reject this framework. Clan associations and Chinese associations (except for Business and Commerce) are struggling to attract the attention and participation of young Chinese communities. The majority of them no longer rely on Chinese social networks to discover their identities.

Many express a strong attachment to Malaysia. Many appreciate the country’s multicultural nature. Many want deeper engagement with other communities. Many dislike race-based politics. Some think abolishing vernacular schools would help foster national unity.

Yet they often struggle to articulate an alternative political vision. Why? Because they learned how to survive the system but were never taught how to shape it. And instead, the shaping was left to community or political elites — business leaders, politicians or political parties’ narratives. Although they played very different political roles, they served as the primary vehicles to articulate Malaysian Chinese interests.

As a result, politics becomes associated with conflict, corruption, and racial tensions rather than collective problem-solving. The outcome is a generation that wants change but often lacks the language, confidence, or institutions to pursue it.

The Non-existence of Imagination

The greatest challenge facing Malaysian Chinese youth today is no longer survival. It is imagination. Can we imagine ourselves as more than economic actors? Can we imagine ourselves as active democratic citizens rather than merely voters? Can we imagine politics as something more than a threat to be managed?

The previous generation’s pragmatism helped build schools, businesses, associations, and communities. Don’t get me wrong, it was necessary. But every successful survival strategy eventually reaches its limits, as we also see the declining influence among all these institutions. What helped one generation survive might prevent the next generation from moving forward.

The question is no longer whether pragmatism works. The question is whether pragmatism has become a convenient excuse for avoiding confronting the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.

Violet Lee is a Researcher with IMAN Research.

It is framed as a warning. But warnings imply a threat, and the threat here is specific: that beneath the surface of Malay patience, or sabar, lies something ungovernable, and that this patience is the only thing standing between order and catastrophe. The speaker is not just furious. He is announcing that he has chosen, so far, not to be.

This rhetorical move has a long history, and to understand it, you have to go back to the word the British gave it.

Amok—from the Malay mengamuk, meaning to engage furiously in battle—entered the English lexicon as a pathology1. Colonial administrators and physicians in the 19th century used it to describe a phenomenon they observed across the Malay Archipelago: men who, after a period of silent brooding, erupted into frenzied violence, attacking anyone in their path until they were killed or subdued. The British were fascinated and alarmed in equal measure. They wrote about it obsessively: Oxley attributed it to gastritis; Ellis catalogued wounds and called the amoker a “mad dog”; colonial courts imposed public executions specifically designed to strip the act of any heroism23.

What the colonial record intentionally did not acknowledge was that amok had a prior meaning. In its pre-colonial conception, amok represented a collective act of martial fury, rooted in the defence of a sovereign or a faith4. It was, in its original form, political violence with a purpose. By the time the British were done translating it, it had become a psychological defect that justified both their rule and their methods.

Williamson argues that the definition of amok is unstable and can be rewritten by whoever holds power5. The post-colonial Malaysian state inherited this colonial interpretation and chose not to discard it. During the 1969 May 13 riots, and again during the 1998 Reformasi protests, the state reached for the same vocabulary. Collective political dissent became an outbreak of amok—irrational, pathological, and requiring suppression rather than engagement.

But something else happened, too. In recent decades, amok became structural.

Calls to lucutkan kewarganegaraan, that is, to strip the citizenship of non-Malays who are seen to have overstepped, are the contemporary descendants of amok, domesticated and routed through the machinery of the state. The logic is similar: a transgression has occurred, and the transgressor must be removed. What has changed is the instrument. Instead of the keris, there is the state apparatus.

This is what the sociologist might call bureaucratic violence: achieving the ends of physical exclusion through legal and institutional means6. It is tidier and deniable. And it is, in its own way, more durable, because it does not require a moment of rupture. It simply accumulates, comment by comment, speech by speech, in the sediment of public discourse.

The logic behind the citizenship threat is revealing. In the nativist imagination, the 1957 social contract was transactional: the Malays granted citizenship to non-Malays, and in return, non-Malays accepted the special position of the Malays, the sovereignty of the rulers, and the primacy of Islam. Citizenship, in this reading, is not a constitutional right—it is a conditional gift. Question the terms, and the gift is void. The pendatang (immigrant) who challenges the tuan rumah (host) is not exercising a democratic right; he is being rude. And the remedy for rudeness, when you are a guest, is eviction—a modern conception of buang negeri (banishment). Historically, buang negeri was the sovereign’s ultimate punishment for derkaha, or treason. So much so that it was previously institutionalised in law under the (now-repealed) Akta Buang Negeri 19597.

This framing of lucutan kewarganegaraan does considerable work. It converts political dissent into a question of manners. It moves the conversation from law to morality, and from rights to gratitude (syukur). And it places the burden of communal peace entirely on the minority: do not provoke, do not challenge, and importantly, do not mistake tolerance for acceptance.

Jangan cabar kesabaran kami sits at the hinge between these two things—the old amok and the new structural violence. It is the moment before the bureaucratic machinery is set in motion, but it carries the memory of what came before that machinery existed. Do not test us, it says, because we know what we are capable of.

The invocation is also, importantly, a performance of virtue. To announce that you are exercising restraint is to claim a kind of moral authority of the one who could, but chooses not to. This is why the rhetoric never arrives alone. It comes with a reminder of the courteous Malay, moulded by adab, and one who has been patient for so long. The implied contrast is with what lies beneath the Islamicised adab: something ancient and terrible, waiting.

In the extreme register—when the issue concerns Islam directly—the rhetoric shifts from the cultural to the theological. This is where terms like kafir harbi and darah halal appear: phrases invoking Islamic jurisprudence to suggest that the blood of the transgressor is permissible to spill. It is rarely a literal instruction. Rather, it functions as a declaration of sacred anger. The speaker is not merely a citizen with a grievance. Instead, he is a defender of the faith, and his rage is a sacred duty.

This is where Sayyidina Umar ibn al-Khattab enters the picture. Umar, the second Caliph, is remembered for his uncompromising defence of Islam and the Prophet. His anger, when roused, was legendary. Among certain segments of Malay society, he serves as an archetype of a particular mode of masculine religious feeling: the gentle believer who, when the sanctity of the faith is violated, transforms into something else entirely. The invocation is not theological in any rigorous sense. It is cultural. It offers a framework in which the anger that follows provocation is not shameful or primitive, but holy. It rebrands amok as jihad—not a loss of control but an assertion of duty.

The question, then, is why violence so rarely follows. Why does the threat remain, so persistently, a threat?

Part of the answer is pragmatic. The nativist establishment has too much to lose. Physical chaos threatens livelihoods, property, and political power; the very things that structural violence is designed to protect. Riots are expensive. Boycotts and sedition laws are not.

But there is also something else. To actually lose control—to go fully amok—would be to confirm the colonial characterisation that the Malay establishment has spent decades rejecting. The “civilised host” cannot also be the mob. The adab Malay cannot also be the rioter. The threat of violence must be maintained; the violence itself must be managed. This is why the state becomes the instrument. When the demand is made to strip citizenship, to investigate, and to prosecute, the individual need not act. His amok is outsourced to the apparatus. The satisfaction is the same, and the Malay image is preserved.

What remains, underneath all of it, is a political culture that organises itself around the perpetual possibility of rupture. The peace is maintained by restraint, not mutual agreement. And in this equation, the majority’s restraint, offered conditionally, is always one provocation away from being withdrawn. Non-Malay Malaysians exist, in this framing, not as equal citizens but as guests living on the goodwill of a host who has not yet lost his kesabaran.

Whether anyone in this discourse actually wants the patience to run out is a separate question. What matters is that the possibility is kept alive. The threat is the point. It is doing its work all the time, quietly, in the architecture of what can and cannot be said.

Aziff Azuddin is the Research Director of IMAN Research.

Part of my TOR at IMAN is to amplify and push our reports, publications, and whatever else we produce, across our institutional and personal social media and WhatsApp. At the moment, I am very certain that I am at the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, as my hand and fingers have been hard at work sending our work off to friends, family, media, and everyone else on my phone.

What is more uncomfortable than my swiping and forwarding is the silence of the people at the receiving end. It is telling that the silence is divided along ethnic lines, and that the fragmentation tracks closely with the class rung they occupy.

As you know, IMAN is currently studying non-Malay youth sentiments in Peninsular Malaysia, focusing on Malaysian Indian and Malaysian Chinese youth. The reception to the Malaysian Indian youth study within the same community veers from total silence to applause or anger. The former comes from professionals who have entered the upper-middle to upper-class strata; the latter from working professionals and activists. For the Chinese youth study, reactions have ranged from anger to compliments, but they are more egalitarian—everyone, it seems, is concerned about where Malaysian Chinese youth are headed.

Perhaps everyone is busy. Many of my contacts are not part of the third sector, and they are focused on other things that do not include saving Malaysia. Being a minority in Malaysia means you have to work doubly hard, within a social framework designed to protect you and your family. You do not need nor want the spotlight, because you want peace. I get that: you have built your dream utopia out of the ashes of your predecessors, you now earn more than many around you, and you do not want trouble.

For a kid like me, who sprang in and out of school, observing the playground politics of her schoolmates and friends in Malaysian schools was quite frightening. I didn’t have the language nor the intellect then as I was young, but I knew that colorism, the status of parents and the cars they drove, and the style of language one spoke, concretised one’s social cachet in school.

My first few school friends in Convent Bukit Nanas were Malaysian Indians and the motley crew I sat with were either at the back of the class or middle of it. They had no choice but to befriend me, this strange Malay girl who kept parachuting in and out of school. One of my first friends was Gnana Money, who told me she was going to become a Bharatanatyam dancer, and she had to be good at it, because that was her future. Another good friend sat right in front of the class, because she was very clever and a class monitor. I copied her homework. She worked really hard too, because she had to, she told me many years later, and when at that time we were both 13 years old, and didn’t know how to articulate racism and injustice. You just had to get straight As to survive. I nodded.

The truth nobody wants to talk about is that Malaysia is fragmented by class. And that this is even more jarring within an ethnicity. This is what you call respectability politics.

Margo Jefferson’s Negroland’s speaks about respectability politics1. Her book was an illuminating insight into upper-class African Americans who were more well-off, lighter-skinned, highly educated, who distanced themselves from working-class blacks who were just… too much. And certainly there was a huge class divide between them and the new rich African American celebrities who were loud, crass, and had risen from rough backgrounds.”

I am reminded of the book as I observe what is happening in Malaysia – education, savings, and wealth are the desired entry points for minority Malaysians to live in the country. And truth be told, Malaysia is a very affordable and wonderful country to live in. Good food, weather, education, but what still halts their success is institutionalised racism. Entering the middle class before scaling up the ladder is a must.

While the oft-used bogeyman—the Chinese—are still viewed as pendatangs, the elites among them are very wealthy2. Unlike the Indian community, Malaysian Chinese—regardless of class—seem unwilling to let their marginalisation go uncontested. They will say it as it is.

Sadly for the minority Malaysian Indians, the silence is telling. And it’s even more hurtful when they are not supported by their own community. In an article about whether MIDA is the driver for the community’s empowerment, Ravindran Raman Kutty opines on the sad state of affairs, “... bottom 20% hold under 6% of income, top 20% hold over 40% …”

I would say that my colleague, Shaleen Surendra’s piece, which looks at the divisions and self-hatred many Malaysian Indians imbibe, is telling. “A respondent described how, as a young child, he did not want anything to do with Tamil culture to avoid being seen as less than and to appeal more to the non-Indian students in school. This ranged from rejecting Tamil culture, language and music in front of his peers despite his deep connection to and interest in them. This is a defence mechanism and a privilege afforded through class to be able to remove oneself from the Tamil identity and heritage. Self-hatred is a disease, but one that comes from carrying generations of pain and trauma, of being neglected and needing to fit in and find a place in this country.”

As a good friend said: “At the end of the day, no matter how much I have in my bank account, I am Indian. A third-class citizen of this country. I don’t want to know.”

Highly recommended reading: Tale of The Dreamer’s Son by Preeta Samaranan.

Dina Zaman is the Co-Founder and Director of IMAN Research.

IDP camp in no-man’s land (Thai-Myanmar border)

On day 3 of the workshop, I travel to Mae Sot, a district renowned for its cross-border trade due to its proximity to the Myanmar border. If you travel around Mae Sot, you can see both Thai and Burmese script, as well as Thai and Burmese people. Before we went to Mae Sot, we were given a detailed briefing on the dos and don’ts during our stay in Mae Sot. As Mae Sot is located near the Thai-Myanmar border, there have been reports of human trafficking where people were tricked by the traffickers, stating that they had been offered a job in Thailand, and only realised after crossing the border that they were actually in Myanmar.

And as I stand right at the border between Myanmar and Thailand, I realised that the border in Southeast Asia is similar to the one I have experienced back in Europe. On a map, a border is a line drawn to divide a place into two parts, each under the sovereignty of a different nation.

And yet, at the Thailand-Myanmar border, and even at the Thailand-Malaysia border, geographical features are used to divide these sovereign territories. Rivers, which are supposed to be places and spaces that breathe life, have now become contested spaces. A space where human crossings, or even animal crossings, become forbidden and odd, by designation of authority that holds the power to define legality. Before the line was drawn, those spaces and places had always been occupied by human and non-human beings.

And right beyond the river lies an island in the middle of it. While the Thai government has now designated the island a no-man’s land (since the river itself serves as the border), I questioned whether that status would remain if the political conflict in Myanmar were resolved. France and Spain shared ownership of Pheasant Island, whose ownership changes with the seasons1.

For comparison, Ankoko Island, located between Guyana and Venezuela and awarded to Guyana in the 1899 Arbitral Award, includes a portion that is currently occupied by Venezuela2. Yet Thailand and Myanmar don’t seem to have any visible dispute over this designation of the no-man’s land.

My suspicion is that it is because of people who established a camp there, seeking refuge from the conflict they faced back home. By gazetting the island as a no-man’s land and stationing the Thai military at the riverbank, Thailand was able to ensure that those were not refugees but instead internally displaced people. It is a clever strategy to mitigate the rising pressure on your citizens and international agencies to manage refugees.

Scam centre in Schwe Kokko

The paradox of the scam centre in Schwe Kokko is even more diabolical. On my last day in Mae Sot, we were driven to China View, a café facing the Schwe Kokko scam centre on the Thai side of the border. The café is situated on the riverbank that divides Thailand and Myanmar, where, on the Myanmar side, you can see an empty boat with no passengers. I was told by the organiser that the military is always on the lookout on the Thai side of the border. And due to the increasing cases of human trafficking, the government has to put up signage informing that the river is a border between Myanmar and Thailand.

The closest village to the café is less than a 5-minute drive. And we can see that the development on the Myanmar side in Schwe Kokko is massive. It is like a city still in development. Then I was reminded when Thailand put pressure on the scam centre last year to shut them down due to the disappearance of a Chinese actor in Thailand, Thailand cut off the scam centre’s electric supply3.

A weird contradiction

Throughout visits to Mae Sot, these practices whereby people challenge the limits of the drawn border are always present. From the IDP camp in no-man’s land to the scam centre right by the border, people continue to move between the places that were supposed to be divided into two sovereign territories. Some of these people who move were classified as undocumented migrants, some claimed themselves as refugees, and others perhaps somewhere in between.

Life continues, while people living in the border area go about their lives, responding to the authority’s measures that divide them. Either by ignoring the rules or choosing the category where their needs fit. Those are agencies. In the end, you can never totally stop mobility; you just reshape it into different forms or approaches. Just like what happened in Mae Sot.

Nadia Lukman is the Operations Director of IMAN Research.

Last April, I travelled to Taipei. While the trip was partly for leisure, there was a deeper, more urgent motivation: the situation in the Taiwan Strait had become increasingly volatile, and I felt a pressing need to see the island with my own eyes.

Taiwan was once dubbed “the most dangerous place on earth” by The Economist during the COVID-19 years. As global supply chains ground to a halt, the world had a collective realisation: we are dangerously reliant on Taiwan’s semiconductors. If a war breaks out, it won’t just be a regional conflict; it will be a global economic catastrophe.

The source of this anxiety is the looming threat of an invasion by China. Beijing has refused to renounce “reunification through military means,” ramping up intimidation through aggressive rhetoric and naval exercises simulating a total encirclement and blockade of the island.

I wanted to witness the reality on the ground before a potentially deadlier situation unfolded. I went there seeking a clearer understanding of what is at stake, not just for the Taiwanese people, but for all of us who are connected to this fragile geography.

The Malaysian Connection

Often overlooked is how deeply the Malaysian Chinese community is intertwined with Taiwan. Our shared history traces back to 1949, following the KMT’s retreat from the mainland. Malaysian Chinese have been present even during Taiwan’s toughest eras, including the White Terror.

For those interested in the history of Malaysian students persecuted during this period of political repression, I highly recommend Toh Jin Xuan's (杜晉軒) work. His book 《血統的原罪：被遺忘的留臺大馬清共生》 (The Sin of Blood) offers a vital and sobering look at these forgotten victims.

This legacy of struggle and contribution is also meticulously documented by the Centre for Malaysian Chinese Studies (華研) in their newly published book, 《以啟山林：馬來西亞華人留台學習與奮鬥史》.

The bond remains strong today. In 2024, there were 9,686 Malaysian students studying in Taiwan. While this is the first time in a decade the number has dipped below 10,000, the influence is profound. Many Malaysian students have been deeply shaped by Taiwan’s civil society, with some even participating discreetly in local movements.

This trip was a mission to build connections with civil society and to understand firsthand what the threat of war feels like to them. We met with experts from the Civil Defense Academy, Information Warfare think tanks, and local elected representatives.

1. What does the threat of war actually mean to them?

Do they truly believe war is coming? To be frank, nobody knows—but our sources agree that preparation is the only logical deterrent.

However, my sources also noted that those truly concerned about the possibility of war remain a minority, even in a major city like Taipei. While there are designated air-raid shelters throughout the city, some observers pointed out that the infrastructure is far from optimal. There are concerns that some shelters are in poor condition, and the signage is often inadequate—sometimes consisting merely of paper notices pasted on walls that are easily damaged by rain.

Regarding the psychological front, one think tank noted a worrying trend among youth who are heavy Douyin users: while they want to maintain the “status quo,” they have significantly less faith in Taiwan’s ability to defend itself or in its institutions compared to non-users.

If the future “pillars of the nation” subscribe to defeatism, they won’t support national defence initiatives as adults. Our sources believe that while a full-scale invasion is a future risk, a “Hybrid War” is already actively underway.

2. How do they defend themselves?

According to the experts we met, the most overlooked element of war isn’t who can hold a gun, but who can keep daily life running. Preventing societal collapse is vital for survival.

• Civil Defence Education: This covers geopolitics, first-aid, OSINT (open-source intelligence), and even drone training.

• The Drone Reserves: Our sources see civilian drone pilots as a massive resource for reconnaissance during wartime.

• Information Defence: Think tanks are countering interference by tracking and engaging on social media. They produce a “China Index” biannually to track Beijing’s influence across different sectors globally.

The Governance Gap

Despite the grassroots energy, our contacts expressed several frustrations:

• Lack of a “War Plan”: One source argued the government has a “defence plan” but lacks a comprehensive “war plan.” There’s a feeling that some elected reps aren’t well-versed in modern tactical developments.

• Legislative Gridlock: Partisan politics has left agencies underfunded. Recently, U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen expressed “deep disappointment” that domestic political obstruction was hindering Taiwan’s defence procurement.

• The Budget Battle: The KMT recently pushed to slash a defence procurement bill. While the government proposed 1.25 trillion NTD to bolster asymmetric warfare, the opposition (KMT/TPP) has manoeuvred to significantly reduce that amount, with some proposals cutting it down to 780 billion NTD.

3. Do they think they can prevail?

Uncertainty looms large. The sources we spoke with are wary of the opposition (KMT and TPP), who are gaining ground ahead of local elections. President Lai Ching-te won in 2024 without a majority, and the legislature remains divided, with the TPP often aligning with the KMT.

Yet, the consensus among our sources is clear: Preparation is the best deterrent. By increasing the cost of an invasion, they hope to prevent it. For them, there is no “Plan B”—if Taiwan falls, they have nowhere else to go.

Epilogue

Taiwan is becoming the political crossroads for Asia—a safe haven where I can meet friends from Hong Kong and even Ukraine. I’ve also met a former leader of the Hong Kong democratic movement who is now building archives for exiled Hongkongers. It was a heavy, deeply personal session, but it is a story for another time.

I’m not someone who finds lasting joy in typical entertainment, but meeting these experts and seeing their resilience was the happiest I’ve been as a researcher in a long time.

Liew Liang Hong is a Researcher with IMAN Research.

Everything seems to be business as usual.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since March—the most severe disruption to global energy supply since the 1970s oil shock. Over a quarter of the world’s oil passes through that narrow corridor between Iran and Oman. And yet, here in Malaysia, you would not know it. Not from the pump price. Not from any government communication asking you to drive less, consume differently, or prepare for what is quietly building on the horizon.

This is the arrangement the Malaysian government has made with the rakyat. It will absorb the shock, quietly, on your behalf. In exchange, you will not be asked to change.

What isn’t discussed is what that arrangement costs—and who ultimately pays for it.

Look at what is happening beyond our borders.

Indonesia, a major oil producer with reserves that should cushion it, still imports over a third of its crude. With only 21 to 23 days of strategic reserves at the start of the crisis, Jakarta moved quickly1. Civil servants were ordered to work from home on Fridays—a measure the government estimates cuts national fuel consumption by 20% on those days2. The message to Indonesians was clear: the situation requires you to change your behaviour. Do it.

The Philippines, more exposed and with fewer fiscal buffers, went further. A four-day working week was mandated for government offices3. Air conditioning limits were enforced in public buildings. The Marcos administration did not pretend the crisis was happening somewhere else.

Myanmar implemented an alternating licence plate system; odd numbers on the road one day, even numbers the next—cutting petrol consumption by half overnight4. It is a blunt instrument, crude in every sense, but it signals something essential: that the public must be part of the response.

Even Thailand, which entered the crisis with roughly 65 days of reserves and more fiscal room than its neighbours, is actively subsidising B20 biodiesel, pushing its citizens toward alternatives and signalling clearly that cheap fuel is not guaranteed forever5.

What these governments share, across different political systems, levels of wealth, and relationships with their publics, is the willingness to tell their citizens the truth about what is happening and to ask something of them in return.

Malaysia, however, appears to have taken a different path.

How has the Malaysian government responded?

The Malaysian government’s response to the crisis has been, in many respects, genuinely impressive. Putrajaya has leveraged its middle-power diplomacy to keep Malaysian-linked tankers transiting the Strait—a diplomatic achievement that most of its neighbours could not manage.6 Malaysia is a net oil and gas producer. The peninsula’s energy supply draws primarily from domestic offshore gas fields, insulating it from the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) shortages crippling Europe and Japan7. There is no immediate physical shortage here.

But the financial picture is something else. Before the crisis, the monthly fuel subsidy bill was running at roughly RM700 million8. By April, that figure had exploded to an estimated RM7 billion—a tenfold increase in a single month—as the government kept RON95 pinned at RM1.99 while Brent crude surged past $120 a barrel910. That is the cost of normalcy; the price of the unchanged Tuesday morning commute.

The Budi95 subsidised fuel quota was quietly cut from 300 litres to 200 litres in April11. The experience of filling up one’s fuel is an interesting one. Since the introduction of Budi95 in September last year, the government has enforced the use of identity cards (ICs) at the pump to ensure the subsidy is enjoyed only by Malaysians. The pump meter would show the unsubsidised rate, but at the end, it would only charge the subsidised rate. It was, at first, a disconcerting experience, but one that is psychologically calculated. It is to silently signal to Malaysians that this is the true price of their subsidy, but that the government was insulating them from economic reality. There is, in some ways, an expectation of gratitude that comes with this.

However, once a driver crosses that 200 litre cap, the unsubsidised rate kicks in at RM3.87 per litre—nearly double. This is the shape of the government’s approach. The price signal—the most basic mechanism by which people understand that a commodity has become scarce—has been deliberately cushioned at the pump. What remains are quiet, bureaucratic adjustments that most Malaysians will feel before they understand. A grocery bill that increased. A delivery surcharge on your favourite online shopping platform. A mamak meal that costs a ringgit more than it did in February.

The crisis is already here. It is just leaking from different areas of our lives.

In this sense, there is a coherent political logic to what the government is doing, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed.

Cheap fuel in Malaysia is not just a subsidy. It is a social contract built over decades by successive administrations, using the pump price as a stabiliser. Floating the price without viable alternatives—without public transit that reaches the semi-urban commuter, without road networks that make carpooling practical outside the Klang Valley—would be a transfer of pain from the federal balance sheet to the most economically exposed households. The government is not wrong that this would be brutal.

But there is a distinction between protecting people from an immediate price shock and refusing to prepare them for what is coming. The first is a defensible act of governance. The second is a choice to leave the public without the information or the tools to adapt—and that has its own long-term cost.

The IMF and regional economists watching this situation are increasingly clear about the trajectory. The annualised subsidy bill at current levels approaches RM84 billion, and it is projected to rise to RM108 billion12. That figure is not sustainable. The question is not whether the subsidy shield eventually comes down; it is whether Malaysians will be ready when it does.

If the government slashes the quota from 200 litres to 150 litres in Q3—and the fiscal pressure makes this increasingly likely—the household that has shifted to public transport or carpooling since April will absorb it differently than the household that has not changed a single routine13. The family that has audited its dependence on imported food will navigate Q4’s supply chain inflation differently than the one that hasn’t. The difference between a managed adjustment and a sudden shock, for a household, is often just whether anyone told them it was coming.

That preparation has not happened. Not by any serious measure from the government, and not—with a few exceptions—from the institutions that should be making it their business to say so.

What can Malaysians do?

What individuals can do, in the absence of official guidance, is mostly boring. Track your litres, not just your ringgit, so you know exactly when your quota runs out each month. Consolidate errands into single routes. If you are in the Klang Valley, find your nearest train station or bus stop, and actually use it, now, before you are forced to. Stock a modest buffer of imported essentials—not panic-buying. Just a quiet acknowledgement that global shipping delays are real and product availability will not be what it was. Build some liquid cash. The grocery bill is going to keep moving.

None of this is dramatic. The countries that will come through this period best are those whose governments provided people with enough information to make small, steady adjustments early, before the hard landing arrived. We saw this happen during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the government gave clear signals to the public, through communications and policy, to influence their consumption and socialisation behaviours14.

Malaysia has the resources to be one of those countries. For now, it has chosen to protect the feeling of normalcy rather than build actual resilience. This is understandable in a political climate where the sitting government feels its legitimacy is shaky and is mulling over early polls15. Any hint of a looming nationwide pricing crisis destabilises the government's ability to retain the confidence of its voting citizens.

And so, the Tuesday morning traffic will keep moving. But somewhere in the accounting—in a ministry budget, in a subsidy line that is bleeding faster than anyone publicly acknowledges—the bill is accumulating. And when it eventually arrives, it will come not as a warning, but as a shock.

The government knows this. It has just decided, for now, that you do not need to.

Aziff Azuddin is the Research Director of IMAN Research.

It’s been 14 years since I met Dato, a retired Malaysian Ambassador. It was he who introduced me to his family up in Memali, and until today, we have kept up a WhatsApp friendship. He’d send me his comments after reading my work, and IMAN Research’s too, when they were published in the media, and it was through him that I met my father’s former assistant, Encik Arof Ishak.

The lunch we had today saw me regaling my Memali adventures, which Dato only heard about today: waking up in his sister’s house with a curious cobra at my feet, being dragged to a Siamese bomoh because of my Cobra encounter, only to be told I had a saka, and subsequently was spanked by a sejadah. It was the most unusual fieldwork encounter I had ever had, and I have had many strange ones!

Ultimately, our lunch revolved around what else—the plight of the Malays.

Our land is fertile, he sighed. It spouts rice, trees, fruit, sustenance, and they are in abundance. We never struggled, even when we faced wars, occupation. We’re not Gaza. Look, once upon a time, we had rice fields. We grew our crops and ate them. Today, we buy our rice; we don’t really have to grow it. Our children are educated, and they send money to the family.

At the end of the day, and coming from a nationalist like him, the (Peninsular) Malays are a political construct. Not like the Javanese—wooh, they had a revolution. The Iranians, too. The Malays are good at mengamuk, but are hopeless at mental revolution.

Dato didn’t agree with the British colonisers, and you know, they’re Christians, they believe Jesus was God, but, for all that religious posturing, they were successful. The Indonesians are still syncretic. Look at them - surpassing us in culture, and now business.

“The Malays’ philosophy is ugama, and here, it means to submit, not think critically,” he said.

Dato is not a liberal. He is a thinking Malay who has out-of-the-box ideas about identity politics, which probably won’t sit well with conservatives (“That’s because they don’t think!”). His concerns about the Malays are shared by many, even those from the right wing. Where are the Malays heading? Decrying colonisation is cosmetic, he said. Economically and politically, we are constructed by policies and idealism.

Last year, IMAN Research launched its Malay Youth report, Orang Kita, after a two-year study of Malay youth in Semenanjung, and I was about a year into the publication of my latest book, Malayland. When all was over, I thought that nothing Malay would appear in my sphere again, for the subject had been discussed enough; I had spent over 20 years covering identity and religious politics in the Malaysian public space – what else was there to say?

At today’s lunch, I realised that the Malay Dilemma, for want of a better word (!), was and is still a topic that demanded to be discussed. In the recent month, a royal kerfuffle in Negeri Sembilan had Malaysians all agog, discussing what was culture, what was Malay, and what was religion. As Dato expostulated while having his lunch, I thought to myself, I hope I’m not in the saddle again.

My sister called from the UK to ask me why a situation was happening the way it was. Her response is a concrete example of why Malaypolitik is the way it is. We are Muslims; this should not happen.

I disagreed. You forget, we are Malays, even as we declare we are Muslims first. Our DNA is that – you can take a Malay out of his or her land, but you cannot take the Malayness out of them. Or at least the politician and Ordinary Malay. And these Malays - perception is truth, power is Godliness, and duplicitousness is society’s wayang kulit. This is how we survive. The educated Malay who despises the Malay he or she sees as inferior will fail gloriously at court politics, in spite of citing Islam, human rights and righteousness. For example, look at Islamist politics and movements and right-wing Malay ones. Who’s sinking? The Islamists. The Malay far-right? Scaling up very nimbly.

“Wah, are you saying culture supersedes Islam?!”

“This is Malay-sia. And here, it is not about relationships and justice. It is how relationships are brokered.”

My colleague shared with us an interesting article about experts and elites, on how it is the elites whose words and social capital hold sway, more so than a person’s knowledge. Now, are our elites still going to hold on to the race and religious cards in 2026, even as many are questioning whether their opinions matter? The Ordinary Malay, as his non-Malay friends are fed up with being used as voting fodder. But in Malay culture, leadership and a power base become unnecessary truths that the rakyat bears, as they also want to uphold Malay supremacy, even if they despise Malay elitism and royal rule.

As the article observed, “Public intellectuals (elites) play a different game. They range wider, speak more freely, and they’re more comfortable telling people what should be done. They aren’t just sharing knowledge. They’re trying to build coalitions, shape opinion, steer the ship. Which means their language shifts. Less jargon, less hedging.”

Maybe it’s time to take out the books again.

Dina Zaman is the Co-Founder and Director of IMAN Research.

In the last couple of months, Tamil Nadu politics has also become a household sensation across Malaysian Indian households. Why? Because of the Kollywood Star, Joseph Vijay’s entry into Tamil Nadu politics with the establishment of his party, Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK). In the last few days leading up to the election results, my Instagram feed has been filled with posts about TVK’s victory amongst Indian friends in Malaysia. The last time we had such a level of frenzy was back when M.G. Ramachandran (MGR) entered politics; I was told the same level of euphoria could also be felt across Tamil Nadu.

In fact, during our fieldwork, most Indian Youths mentioned to us that they are only following Indian Politics, in this instance Tamil Nadu politics, only because the actor-turned politician has entered the political arena. It reminded me of Malaysia’s 14th General Elections in 2018, where the drive that pushed Malaysians to vote was a desire for change, captured in the slogans “Ubah” and “Ini kalilah”. Similarly, Vijay’s entry into politics through TVK was premised on being a voice for change and on unseating the incumbent, amid anger over corruption and poor governance.

Malaysian Indians, in this case mostly my friends on social media, who normally avoid posting or sharing any political developments, whether national or international, were suddenly posting about Tamil Nadu’s election throughout the campaign and on polling day. Many of them were glued to Tamil Nadu news channels on the 4th of May, as they began reporting the vote counts from 11 am (GMT) onwards. This was particularly interesting because it tells us something about “hero‑worship” in politics.

For many of these voters and fans, Vijay is not just an actor who entered politics; he is a story they recognise themselves in—a hero who speaks to frustration with corruption, unemployment, and inequality in a language of dignity and pride. Tamil Nadu has seen this before: from MGR to Jayalalithaa, cinema has long been a gateway into politics, turning fandom into political capital. What feels new is the scale and speed at which social media has amplified this devotion, making rallies, hashtags and fan pages feel like a permanent election campaign.

Hero worship in politics can manifest itself as uncritical admiration towards a leader, treating them as infallible and beyond criticism. This is what I’m seeing now, and it is frankly, worrying. I’m not reducing the efforts of Vijay in securing 108 over seats as a two-year-old party and unseating the largely two-party system that Tamil Nadu has had for decades; emerging as a significant third force is no small deal. But he is a good strategist; that is all this is. He took calculated risks and used the anti-incumbency sentiment that was brewing in the State to his favour.

Dr B.R. Ambedkar has warned us against hero-worshipping, and no politician should be above the point of criticism. There is a difference between investing hope in a leader and surrendering one’s judgment to him. Hope can coexist with scrutiny; hero worship rarely does. Ambedkar warned that India is “a land of idolatry” where heroes easily replace institutions in the public imagination, and where bhakti in politics becomes “a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.” When supporters insist that “our leader can do no wrong” and criticism is treated as betrayal rather than accountability, devotion stops being democratic energy and becomes a democratic risk.

As a Malaysian, I cannot pretend this is only a Tamil Nadu story. Our own 2018 moment was also narrated through larger‑than‑life figures and simple slogans that promised renewal. The disappointment and disillusionment that followed should have taught us that no single leader can substitute for the slow, often frustrating work of building institutions, movements and political literacy. If we are not careful, we will repeat the same cycle: invest everything in one “saviour”, only to find that we have weakened the very democratic muscles we need when that saviour falls short.

Ambedkar’s caution is ringing in my ears as I scroll through yet another celebratory clip of Vijay’s victory rally. There is nothing wrong with admiration or with being moved by a leader who finally seems to speak to our anger and our aspirations. The danger lies in handing over our doubts, our questions and our critical faculties along with our votes. Whether in Chennai or Kuala Lumpur, democracy demands more of us than cheering from the sidelines. It asks us to love our heroes, if we must, but to love our institutions, our principles and our own capacity to say “no” even more.

Shalini Muniapan is a Researcher with IMAN Research.

There is a particular kind of frustration Malaysians direct at their politicians. The complaints are familiar: they are in it for themselves, they play games, they say one thing and do another, they are obsessed with power, money, and staying in the room. The criticism lands so naturally, so repeatedly, that it starts to feel like a national self-understanding: we are a people who are let down by our leaders. We want better and deserve better. Is this the whole story, though?

The RA is, technically speaking, one of the most democratic institutions that most Malaysians will ever be a part of. There are elections. There is a constitution, bylaws, and a committee structure with named positions—chairperson, secretary, treasurer. There is a pooled fund; contributions from households. A stray cat that someone has to manage, and everyone has some claim on. There is an annual general meeting where decisions are made collectively, disagreements are aired, and votes are held. There are emergency general meetings when things go sideways, which is more often than the name implies.

It is, in miniature, a functioning democratic structure. And what plays out inside it, if you have been paying attention, is recognisably politics. I mean this precisely—not loosely, and not as a metaphor. The same moves that frustrate people at the national level are rehearsed on a smaller scale in neighbourhood or strata WhatsApp groups and in committee room elections everywhere in this country.

There are people who run for the committee every year, not because they have a vision for the neighbourhood or condominium, but because they want to be the ones deciding things. There are quiet campaigns before AGMs—the phone calls, the visits to certain units, the assurance that if you vote for this person, they will take care of that matter you have been raising for a year over. There are factions that form over issues so small they are genuinely hard to explain to someone not involved: which contractor gets the maintenance contract, whether the neighbourhood should get more CCTV cameras, and what to do about the stray cats that go around invading other homes in the neighbourhood. There is embezzlement, sometimes. Not always, but enough that it is a known category of residents’ association stories in Malaysia.

There are also the racialised versions of all this. A neighbourhood or strata’s ethnic composition shapes what the committee prioritises: which events get funded, and whose concerns get heard first. The surau question and the dog question are not just administrative matters. They carry the same freighted meaning at the neighbourhood level that larger public debates carry nationally. In some residents’ associations, the politics is more nakedly ethnic than anything you would see on a campaign stage, precisely because there is no national audience watching.

To be clear, this is not a critique of residents’ associations. That would be to miss the point entirely. The point is that the people involved in these dynamics—the ones running for committee, the ones lobbying their neighbours before a vote, the ones who get frustrated when the treasurer cannot account for where the maintenance fees went or are used—these are not a different category of person from the politicians they criticise. They are the politicians. Or rather, they are demonstrating, with great consistency, how people behave when they have access to a collective resource and a structure that lets some of them make decisions for the rest.

The scale is smaller, the stakes are lower. But the behaviour is the same.

There is a version of civic education that tries to make this argument from the top down: here is how democracy works, here are your rights, here is why participation matters. It tends to produce the glazed-eyes response. Abstract structures are hard to care about.

What the residents’ association gives you is the same lesson from the bottom up. You do not need to read a manifesto about why democratic accountability matters. You just need to remember how angry you were when you found out the committee spent half the event budget on something nobody voted for, and nobody could fully explain afterwards.

That anger is a democratic instinct. It is an instinct that already exists in people who say they are not political, who say they do not understand politics, who say they just want someone to do the job properly. They understand exactly what the job is. They know what accountability is supposed to look like. They have wanted it at the neighbourhood level. They just have not always connected that desire to what they want from the people governing the country. This is a connection worth sitting with.

If power at the residents' association level—which is to say, control over a modest fund and a small set of decisions—produces the manoeuvring, misuse, and faction-forming that it does, then what is the expectation when the resources are exponentially larger, and the decisions affect millions of people? The same tendencies, given more room, do not disappear. They expand into the space available.

And if the same tendencies already exist in us—in the neighbours we know, in ourselves sometimes, in the way we will lobby quietly for a committee member who we think will side with us on the surau-use dispute—then the question of what kind of politicians we produce is partly a question about what kind of political culture we have already built, at the level where most of us actually built.

You cannot fully separate the two. The national is an amplified version of the local. The local is where the same human material gets its first practice run.

I am not saying the solution is for everyone to take their residents’ association more seriously, or to become a model democratic citizen at the neighbourhood level and wait for it to scale. That is not quite it.

What I think it points to is something harder and less actionable: that if you want a better politics, you have to contend with the fact that politics is already happening around you, and you are already in it. The question of what kind of political culture Malaysia has is not confined to Putrajaya. It lives in the AGM that turned tense when the accounts could not be fully explained. It lives in the WhatsApp group where the same person talks to most and listens the least. It lives in the way a neighbourhood handles its disagreements—whether they are managed, avoided, or weaponised.

After all, the gap between what we want from politicians and what we demonstrate we are willing to settle for in our own communities is worth measuring. It is rarely flattering.

Aziff Azuddin is the Research Director of IMAN Research.

There is a film about GE14 that I have been thinking about lately: RISE: Ini Kalilah. Not because it was a good film by any measure, but because it captured the democratic tension surrounding the single act of voting. Malaysians abroad scrambling to get postal ballots home in time and physically transporting other people’s votes. The urgency of it. The idea that one ballot, lost somewhere between London and Kuala Lumpur, could mean something.

The belief that the vote was everything—that it was the whole of what democratic citizenship could be. And in 2018, in a country that had spent sixty years under the same government, you could understand why.

What I have been sitting with, though, is how much that belief has cost us since.

GE14 handed Malaysians a story about themselves: that voting is what changes things. That the ballot is where the fight lives and dies. It made sense in that moment. The scale of what happened—Barisan Nasional, out—was extraordinary enough that it seemed to confirm the whole framework. Vote, and the world shifts.

Then GE15 happened. You could vote for Pakatan Harapan; vote for reform, vote for everything BN was not—and somehow still wake up to a government that included UMNO. Not because of a miscount in votes. But because in a hung parliament, the votes are only the beginning. What follows is coalition mathematics, backroom negotiation, and the exchange of one concession for another. None of that is visible to the voter. None of it is in your hands.

The formation of the Madani government was an awakening for most of us. For a significant portion of Pakatan’s base, UMNO was exactly what they’d been voting against for years. But political survival in a fractured parliament requires coalitions, and coalitions require compromise, and compromise does not stop to ask whether the act conflicts with the mandate your voters thought they were giving you.

What the vote does, I have come to believe, is get your chosen team through the door. Everything after that, such as questions about who they have to share power with, what they have to trade for it; you have no formal role in these decisions. For practical purposes, your democratic participation ends at the ballot box.

There is a structural reason for this, and it is worth naming clearly.

Politicians are not primarily driven by ideology (though one could argue differently for PAS). They are driven by what helps them survive. Once someone enters the seat of power, the calculation they are primarily running isn’t “what do my voters want?”. It is “What do I have to do to stay here?” Those are related questions, but they are not the same question.

This is not cynicism about individuals. It is just how systems work. The incentives within any structure of power—party hierarchy, coalition obligations, civil service inertia, the need to maintain relationships that span ideological lines—tend to reward staying in the game rather than disrupting it. Even the best-intentioned person who enters that environment will eventually have to choose between their convictions and their political survival.

When DAP supporters accuse the party of being muted on crucial issues since joining the Madani government (to the point of being accused as MCA 2.0), they are identifying something real. The observation is accurate. But the cause is not betrayal. It is the same pressure that bends every political actor who has to govern rather than just oppose. The room is different from the outside.

If you want politicians to make different decisions, you have to change what goes into their calculations. And that means the environment they’re operating in has to change—not just the people.

What I mean is not just policy or institutional reform, though those matter. I mean something closer to what people openly expect, what they tolerate, what they refuse. The norms of a political culture. Whether accountability is treated as a civic value or an opposition sport. Whether the ordinary person sees their role in democracy as choosing a team every five years, or as something more continuous.

Political parties respond to incentives. This is something that Prof. Wong Chin Huat, one of BERSIH’s founding members and a known political scientist, often repeats in his many public statements1. And the most durable incentive is a public that has cultivated expectations clear enough and consistent enough that ignoring them becomes costly. This is not a new insight—it is how democratic norms have moved historically, everywhere. Not from the top down, but from the accumulated pressure of organised constituencies, making certain positions expensive to hold.

The Malaysian public has not, for the most part, built that kind of pressure. Though you see instances of this across some issues, such as allowing the emergency withdrawal of EPF funds during the height of the pandemic2. But even here, the heavy reliance on political figures to champion this agenda was noticeable. The campaign was not naturally owned by the public.

Part of what makes this hard to say is that the expectation has been displaced elsewhere. The burden of pushing for democratic norms—for accountability, for equitable policy, for a political culture worth having—has landed almost entirely on civil society. NGOs and advocacy organisations carry expectations that are entirely disproportionate to the resources they receive.

What I hear from people in this space is consistent: the hardest problem is the public’s passivity. The public broadly agrees with what civil society is trying to do. Crucially, however, is the zero involvement. The public does not fund these causes, join them, or show up. International foundations typically end up filling the gap. And when those grants disappear, or when geopolitical winds shift, the entire infrastructure collapses.

This is what the belief that voting is enough produces. If the ballot is the full extent of democratic responsibility, everything else becomes someone else’s job. Something other people do. People who really care about “these things.” The ordinary citizen has discharged their civic duty; they can go home.

But democracy does not maintain itself. It requires people to care about it between elections. It requires the active work of building an environment—a culture, really—in which certain things are expected of those in power, because the public has made its expectations legible and durable.

I am not demanding that everyone become an activist. The costs of civic participation are real. In a country where people are stretched thin by the cost of living, stagnant wages, and a sense that the system is not really designed for them—asking someone to also become a civic organiser is a lot to ask. I know this. I have spoken to enough people in the last few years to understand how tired they are.

But there is a version of this that does not require anyone to become someone they are not. It starts with a shift in how democratic citizenship is understood. To appreciate what it means to be someone who is invested in how this country is governed. Not just during elections, but between them. In the small, cumulative ways that either do or do not build a culture of accountability.

What was extraordinary about GE14 was not just the votes. It was the energy that surrounded it. The conversations, the sense of shared purpose, the feeling that something mattered. That energy dissipated, in part, because there was no structure to hold it. No organisation, no community, and no platform that could direct this energy somewhere useful once the election was over.

But what if that energy had somewhere to go?

GE16 is likely coming in by the end of this year3. There will be another surge of electoral energy: the voter registration drives, the social media campaigns, the familiar urgency of an impending election. Showing up still matters. I want to be clear about that.

But a vote cast once and nothing else, into a system whose incentive structures have not shifted, is not going to produce a different outcome from the one we already have. The vote is the base. What gets built on top of it; the entire civic infrastructure, organising, building community, and the cultivation of norms that politicians actually have to respond to—that is what determines whether Malaysian democracy develops into something real, or stays a performance we put on every few years.

After all, the most important question is not who wins the next election. It is what kind of public they will be governing—and whether that public has made itself impossible to ignore.

Aziff Azuddin is the Research Director of IMAN Research.

The sudden announcement by Undang ber-empat regarding the pemecatan of Yang di-Pertuan Besar Negeri Sembilan (hereinafter referred to as Yamtuan) revealed an issue that requires urgent attention. Our politicians must have the cultural nuance to address difficult situations, especially in locations like Negeri Sembilan, where different rules apply under Adat Perpatih. This is where the rules we learn from the history book on Adat Perpatih are supposed to help us understand the basic tenets of the laws that apply: “anak buah memilih buapak, buapak memilih lembaga, lembaga memilih undang, undang memilih yamtuan”. Our one-size-fits-all approach to Malay as an umbrella term did not do justice to people’s understanding of the cultural nuances of Negeri Sembilan, and day by day, people attempt to understand the community and state by shoving the Adat Temenggung down their throats. This is the failure of the system. A system designed for one, which they thought was one, Malay.

The confusion in local cultural laws

This current situation, in which the crisis transpired between Yamtuan and Undang, could have been prevented early on. Statement by statement, released by Undang Luak Sungei Ujong Facebook page, indicated a timeline of conflict - one which involves an incident as far back as 2025 with the firing of Dato’ Andulika Mandulika from Zainol Ariffin bin Ibrahim and Dato’ Johan Tua Tahu from Wan Khairil bin Mohd Yusoff1. In fact, in March 2026, the supposed ex-Dato’ Andulika Mandulika Zainol Ariffin bin Ibrahim announced the firing of the alleged ex- Undang Luak Sungei Ujong, Dato Kelana Petra Mubarak bin Thahak.

There are now two camps in this local political conflict, on the one side, ex-Dato’ Andulika Mandulika Zainol Ariffin bin Ibrahim, with the support of Ibu Soko, and on the other side, allegedly ex-Undang Luak Sungei Ujong, Dato Kelana Petra Mubarak bin Thahak.

Then, in this situation, how should Ibu Soko navigate the conflict? This is not the first time in Negeri Sembilan that an Undang has been asked to step aside due to some ‘pelanggaran adat’. But it is indeed the first time that such a procedure was not consulted or involved Datuk Lembaga Adat. Comparing this incident to the 2016 Undang Johol incident, the announcement of Undang Johol’s firing was made by Buapak Berenam2. Remember the basic tenets: ‘bulat anak buah memilih buapak, bulat buapak memilih lembaga, bulat lembaga memilih undang, bulat undang memilih yamtuan’. Without involving the lembaga and buapak, it is difficult to argue that the procedure for firing an Undang can be completed.

Yet the procedure taken for Undang Luak Sungei Ujong, or arguably ‘former’ Undang Luak Sungei Ujong, is unconventional according to local context. Dato’ Lembaga Adat Sungei Ujong released a statement supporting Undang Luak Sungei Ujong in defending his seat, which meant that Kebulatan was never achieved here. Argument used by Ibu Soko in her statement justifying her power to fire Dato Kelana Petra Mubarak bin Thahak is that ‘Sungei Ujong Waris Berundang’ and not ‘Sungei Ujong Lembaga Berundang’3. This meant that, in essence, the cultural law of Sungei Ujong vested power in the Waris to fire the Undang, rather than in the Lembaga.

Cultural laws must be learned, documented and spread to survive modern times

The strengths and weaknesses of Adat Perpatih Negeri Sembilan are that different Luak have their own local protocols and cultures, which may make it hard for outsiders to navigate the current situation. While the current system shows that local cultural laws can survive in modern times, proper documentation, training, and exposure to outsiders are needed, especially for aspiring politicians navigating current conflicting circumstances. One can argue that this conflict could have been prevented without the need for other Undang to be involved in the current political scuffle.

While the term Malay has been used to classify and categorise the supposedly peribumi people of Peninsular Malaysia, one must also consider how using a single term to fit various subcultures within a single category endangers their ability to survive. Current political chaos, while creating opportunities to educate the general public about Adat Perpatih and broadening their understanding of it beyond matrilineal land inheritance, risks tarnishing the trust of common people in such institutions. Without a proper understanding, the uniqueness of such cultures cannot survive.

An untapped opportunity: Malaysia’s unrevealed multiculturalism

This conflict also presents an opportunity for nationbuilders to tap into another dimension of Malaysia’s unrevealed multiculturalism, a subdivision inside this one size fits all categories. IMAN’s current project revealed a tension among subethnic groups within the Indian community in Malaysia. Interestingly, this current conflict could be one of the forgotten examples of how diverse Malays could be. Emphasising multiculturalism moving forward helps more people accept differences and celebrate diversity, rather than forcing a dominant culture down people’s throats. This should be the way forward.

Nadia Lukman is the Operations Director of IMAN Research.