🇲🇾 Anwar's report card reads: could try harder next year

Hello friends!

Do you know what today is! One year of Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister! 

Cast your mind back a year, to when Malaysia ruled Twitter for a week after no clear majority won the general election and it got very busy. I remember exactly where I was when it was announced: sitting at a very hip cafe in Bangkok with my friend Tim, who short of hanging with a Malaysian pal, is the best possible person to have been with. ‘It’s Anwar!’ I said and we both kinda just went ‘Holy heck.’ And then stopped working and read Twitter for an hour. 

That seems quaint now. The incredible, long story that got him there has been sidelined for the real business of leading — and so it should. It’s a mixed score card but the overall from Malaysia message is: is this what stability feels like? It’s nice. But time to use the stability to move forward.

Let’s crack in!

🇲🇾 One year on, now what?

Writing in part one of a two-part analysis on the year that was for Malaysiakini, Bridget Welsh looks at the year that was. Anwar has had some genuine wins. It’s the most productive government in a long time with economic and social reforms that have been warmly welcomed. Anwar may not be the one to thank, however. Welsh notes that most of this policy came out of Mahathir Mohamad’s Pakatan Harapan government. Still! It wouldn’t have passed without Anwar and that’s politics, baby! 

It’s the second half of this analysis that I found particularly compelling. Anwar is torn between shoring up the Muslim Malay vote — whether that’s pragmatism or returning to his Islamist student activist day roots is up for debate. “Ironically, the more Anwar embraces and normalises an Islamist agenda, the more he normalises the option for an Islamist party to govern nationally,” Welsh writes. That’s a problem for both moderates in the country, often the same cohort that has supported him since Reformasi, and electorates in Borneo who don’t want a bar of it. 

The year ahead needs to be less about Anwar and what he wants and more about Malaysia and what it needs, Welsh concludes. Recent precedent shows support for governments waver around the one-year mark and he needs to wise up quickly. 

Nikkei Asia is happy with the economic movement of the last year but warns there are some challenges coming up quickly. “The government has introduced the New Industrial Master Plan 2030, which includes a target of boosting the manufacturing sector's GDP by 6.5% annually through 2030, and the National Energy Transition Roadmap, which seeks to restructure the economy, achieve sustainable growth and ensure an equitable distribution of wealth,” Norman Goh reports. Both are the type of lofty and ambitious, but manageable, goals Malaysia needs.

The ringgit is doing really poorly compared to the rest of the region and inflation is stinging, especially on basic foods. “I know the government is trying [to address food inflation], but the rising food prices over the past year have affected many of us, especially small businesses like ours. I'm not sure how long I can continue,” Petaling Jaya vegetarian food storeholder Wong Mee Fang told Nikkei. She was especially hit by the sharp jump in rice prices back in September. 

He needs to get a move on, academic James Chin told the outlet: “A lot of people don't believe that he can do it, and that is why you can see the fall of the ringgit and you see the stock market is restless. He has to put in policies that will pay off in one or two years' time. So time is running out for him.” 

Leslie Lopez at Channel News Asia agrees. “The main gripe against Anwar is that he is moving too cautiously, a criticism that several of his long-time business and political associates acknowledge is justified,” she writes this week. 

She ties Anwar’s busy schedule abroad, visiting other leaders of Muslim-majority countries and drumming up support for the Palestinian cause as a push for tying down the Muslim vote at home. It’s probably not a strategy that will work — PAS cannot be out-PAS’d. “Rather than trying to outdo the country’s Malay parties at championing causes related to Islam, Anwar stands a better chance of building his political prestige among the Malays by tackling problems facing the poorer segments of society and the unemployed,” Lopez writes. 

“The whole team has tried its best, and God willing, we will improve,” Anwar said of his cabinet at an event to mark the anniversary yesterday. He reiterated that he wants to fight corruption and maintain stability for the years ahead. 

Well, get to it then, Malaysians seem to be saying through recent polling. A Merdeka Centre survey this week showed he’s dropped down to 50% approval from 68% last December. Subsidy cuts and higher taxes may be the main drive, the Centre said in a statement, as per CNA. 

“This is the right time to focus on longer-term structural issues — while there's political stability in place, early on in his electoral term,” Dr Tricia Yeoh, chief executive officer of Malaysia’s Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), told CNA. As an aside, I saw her speak on a recent panel through USyd where she explained this much deeper. It’s the boring nuts and bolts compared to Anwar leading mass demonstrations for Palestine and pushing back against the Americans, but I was fully convinced. Boring but vital reform is needed from the never-boring former reformist. 

Elsewhere, Muhyiddin Yassin and Bersatu are up to something weird today that we’ll catch up on next week when it all comes out. Also, some explosive allegations from Sirul Azhar Umar, who told Al Jazeera (our link today via the Star) that he was paid to keep his mouth shut about the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu. He says it was a then-cabinet member and a politically linked lawyer. Both of these are happening literally right now so will follow over the weekend. 

And finally! Here’s one from the messy world of Twitter where an account called Israel War Room tried to ??? get in between Malaysia and Singapore. The account linked Malaysia’s support of Palestine and anger towards Israel with Israel’s support of Singapore establishing its army. “Malaysians hate Israel because Israel helped the small, defiant bastion of prosperity that is Singapore achieve independence and succeed against the wishes of a neighbour that wants to dominate it,” the post said.

Firstly, nobody talks shit about Singapore except us, said Malaysian Twitter — and even then it’s usually about food. It’s also an ahistorical reading of what actually happened to the two countries: “The Malaysia and Singapore story is an example of a successful ‘2 state’ solution. Both nations set their own path and both nations become prosperous in its own way. Both nations benefit from having a strong relationship together,” user J Shamsul Bahri wrote, as quoted by SCMP. Progressive Singaporeans on the app also pushed back against the weird narrative. 

Singapore's Prime Minister, speaking separately, isn’t concerned at all with the divergence of responses to the conflict between the neighbours: “I don’t think they should affect our bilateral relations. I think we have each expressed our views on what is happening in the Middle East.”

I think this will feel like a non-story to a lot of readers, but I find this little incident fascinating. Malaysia as a government and as a people have been some of the most outspoken in support of Palestine, but there’s no interest in bringing that war of words home. Maybe not even no interest, more a distinct protection against having it impact the region. No one’s too clear on who owns this account or what their motivations were in making the post (and given everything we know about how governments use social media for prop campaigns), but it has backfired.