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hen Anwar Ibrahim was appointed as Malaysia’s prime minister in November 2022, his assumption of power marked not only the culmination of a decades-long personal odyssey, defined by political persecution, imprisonment, and resilience, but also the symbolic return of Reformasi to the seat of power.
Reformasi, the reform movement Anwar launched in 1998 following his dramatic ousting from government, has long embodied the call for justice, accountability, and democratic reform in Malaysia.
To many, Anwar’s premiership signalled the possibility of a renewed democratic transformation, an opportunity to revive the hope sparked in 2018, when Malaysians voted out a government that had ruled the country since independence.
Yet the promise of 2018 soon gave way to elite defections, shifting alliances, and a sense of betrayal. Malaysians saw Anwar’s ascent as a chance to course-correct. But more than two years into his tenure, that promise remains unfulfilled, not entirely broken, but significantly constrained.
Today, Malaysia is neither an entrenched democracy nor an outright authoritarian state. Instead, it exists in a state of democratic tension, where electoral competition coexists with institutional fragility, and where democratic ideals continue to clash with deep-seated authoritarian legacies. Anwar’s government, forged through an uneasy “unity” coalition, is both a product and a prisoner of those contradictions.
A critical examination of the state of human rights and democracy under Anwar’s administration requires a lens into the deeper structural contradictions of Malaysia’s democratic journey, not a checklist of reforms.
The weight of 2018: a cautionary tale
To understand the ambivalence of Anwar’s administration, one must return to 2018. That year, Malaysia achieved what many deemed impossible: the peaceful electoral defeat of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which had ruled the country uninterrupted since independence. The victory of Pakatan Harapan (PH) was not just a political win; it was a rupture in the dominant-party system that had governed through a combination of patronage, racial nationalism, and legal coercion.
Yet, the rupture was fragile. PH’s fall in 2020 through elite defections and the “Sheraton Move” (which triggered its collapse) revealed the structural weaknesses of Malaysia’s democracy: party fluidity, concentration of executive power, and a political culture shaped more by pragmatism than principle.
The fall left a vacuum of public trust that no subsequent government – whether Perikatan Nasional (PN) or Barisan Nasional (BN) – could fill.
Anwar’s rise to power in 2022, through a hung parliament and a fragile coalition with former adversaries, was thus paradoxical. He came to power not through a wave of popular mobilization, but through an elite bargain that included the very figures he once opposed. It was a pragmatic compromise in the service of stability, but one that came at the cost of reformist coherence.
The limits of transformation
The Anwar administration has made some commendable institutional moves: abolishing the mandatory death penalty, decriminalizing suicide attempts, proposing a Freedom of Information Act, and pledging to separate the roles of Attorney General and Public Prosecutor. These reforms matter. They are part of the necessary scaffolding of a rights-respecting democratic state.
Yet the deeper question is whether these measures are signs of systemic transformation or symbolic gestures contained by political expediency. On issues that cut at the heart of state power, such as police accountability, security laws like the Sedition Act or the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (SOSMA), or university autonomy, Anwar’s government has equivocated or outright defended the status quo.
The continued use of colonial-era laws to investigate opposition politicians and activists raises a troubling irony: the very legal instruments once used against Anwar are now being deployed under his watch. His supporters argue that institutional inertia is to blame, that the deep state resists change, and that political stability must take precedence. But this defense only reinforces a troubling reality: that even reformers, once in power, find the architecture of control too valuable to dismantle.
In this context, Anwar’s Reformasi ethos risks being reduced to a brand, invoked for legitimacy but sidelined in governance.
Human rights as a political commodity
Malaysia’s human rights landscape under Anwar’s government reveals the selective logic of reform. On some fronts, there is visible progress: expanding anti-discrimination discourse in limited domains, engagement with civil society on freedom of information, and efforts to reassert parliamentary accountability.
But the same administration has weaponized censorship against LGBTQIA+ expression, maintained discriminatory citizenship laws, and overseen the banning of films and books deemed morally offensive.
The Home Ministry’s seizure of Pride-themed Swatch watches in 2023 and the banning of the independent film Mentega Terbang two years after it was released, are not merely isolated acts of cultural conservatism. They are political calculations.
In a polarized society where the Malay-Muslim vote is seen as decisive, minority rights become expendable, a bargaining chip in the ideological arms race with PAS and other Islamists.
This instrumental approach to human rights reflects a broader tension in Malaysia’s democratization: the contradiction between majoritarianism and pluralism. Anwar’s administration, bound by electoral arithmetic, is unwilling to confront the normative foundations of discrimination. The result is a government that speaks the language of diversity but governs through compromise and avoidance.
The politics of accountability
Nowhere is the reformist contradiction more visible than in the case of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. The decision to grant Zahid a discharge not amounting to acquittal (DNAA) in his corruption trial struck at the heart of public confidence in the rule of law.
Anwar’s refusal to intervene, citing prosecutorial independence, may have been constitutionally sound, but politically it reinforced perceptions of selective justice.
This is not just about one case. It is about the deeper question of whether Malaysia’s democratic transition can disentangle itself from patronage politics. If anti-corruption efforts are seen as a partisan tool, targeting the opposition while shielding coalition partners, the reform agenda loses its moral high ground.
To be fair, Malaysia’s judiciary has shown resilience in recent years. Disgraced former prime minister Najib Razak’s conviction and incarceration, despite his political clout, are a testament to that. But prosecutorial decisions remain susceptible to executive influence, especially as long as the Attorney General holds dual roles.
Anwar’s pledge to separate these roles is welcome, but like many of his reforms, it remains aspirational rather than realized.
The depoliticization of activism
One of the paradoxes of Malaysia’s post-2018 political environment is that while electoral democracy has advanced through reforms like automatic voter registration and lowering the voting age, civil society space has not expanded in parallel. Some would argue it has shrunk.
Police investigations into peaceful assemblies, restrictions on student activism, and bureaucratic surveillance of NGOs persist under the current government. The Sedition Act and Communications and Multimedia Act continue to cast a long shadow over speech, particularly when it touches on race, religion, or royalty.
Even media outlets have reported unexplained website blocks, which can chill editorial independence.
The Anwar government’s sporadic engagement with civil society, via townhalls or policy consultations, has done little to alter this atmosphere of caution. Participation exists, but only within limits. Civil society can critique, but not contest. It can advise, but not disrupt.
This technocratic approach to engagement treats civil society as a policy tool, not a democratic partner. The effect is a depoliticization of activism, precisely the opposite of what Reformasi once stood for.
Between authoritarian residues and democratic aspirations
To evaluate Anwar Ibrahim’s administration solely by the yardstick of failures would be unfair. Malaysia remains, by many standards, one of the more open societies in Southeast Asia. The press, while pressured, is not silenced. Elections are competitive. Parliament is functional. The courts are not wholly captured.
But the broader picture is of a democratisation process caught in a feedback loop. Reforms are initiated, but not institutionalized. Gains are made, but quickly neutralized by political compromise. The pendulum swings between progress and paralysis.
Anwar, as the longest-serving opposition leader and once the face of Malaysia’s democratic resistance, is uniquely positioned and uniquely burdened. His leadership carries the weight of decades of hope. That he now governs with those he once opposed is not necessarily a betrayal, but it is a contradiction that demands navigation.
The tragedy is not that Anwar has failed. It is that he may settle for managing democracy rather than transforming it.
Reform fatigue or democratic maturity?
Malaysia’s democratic trajectory is not linear. It is messy, conflictual, and profoundly shaped by history. Anwar Ibrahim’s government reflects this messiness. It carries the aspirations of 1998 and 2018, but also the limitations of institutional inertia, ideological fragmentation, and political realism.
The risk ahead is not authoritarian reversal, but reform fatigue. If the Anwar administration continues to oscillate between rhetoric and restraint, it may inadvertently normalize a hybrid model of governance – democratic in appearance, but selective in substance.
The challenge for Malaysia, and Anwar himself, is whether reform can be reclaimed as a transformative ethos, one that does not merely navigate power but reimagines it. That project remains incomplete. But the window has not yet closed. ◉
Khoo Ying Hooi, PhD, is Associate Professor of International Relations and Human Rights at Universiti Malaya researching human rights, democracy, civil society, and Southeast Asian politics, particularly in Malaysia and Timor-Leste. Author of two books and editor-in-chief of the Malaysian Journal of International Relations, she also serves on advisory and editorial boards, and contributes to regional consultancies.
