Mariam Mokhtar
Published: Dec 19, 2025 10:48 AM
Updated: 1:48 PM
COMMENT | Sixty-eight years after independence, Malaysia stubbornly refuses to drop the race argument when power is redistributed.
The appointment of Hannah Yeoh as minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Federal Territories) has again triggered familiar anxieties.
Not about governance, accountability, or unchecked development, but about ethnicity and religion. That instinctive response says less about Yeoh than it does about how poorly we understand where power actually lies in Kuala Lumpur.
The federal territories portfolio is not ceremonial. It is one of the most politically volatile briefs in government.
Kuala Lumpur is under intense development pressure. Residents are increasingly vocal about density and displacement, and civil society groups have long warned that the city adopts a governance model that concentrates power rather than disperses it.
Whoever holds this portfolio inherits tension by design.
Obfuscation
Instead of interrogating that structure, parts of the public debate obsessed about Yeoh’s identity, as a Chinese, non-Muslim woman, as though the race of the minister determines who benefits from urban policy.
This framing is not only inaccurate; it actively shields the real centres of power from scrutiny.
Historically, every federal territories minister before Yeoh was Malay and Muslim. Several left office amid allegations of corruption, abuse, or serious governance failures.
For example, former federal territories minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor was found guilty by the High Court of accepting RM2 million in connection with official duties during his tenure, and was later sentenced to prison and fined, but the execution of the sentence was stayed pending appeal.
Published: Dec 19, 2025 10:48 AM
Updated: 1:48 PM
COMMENT | Sixty-eight years after independence, Malaysia stubbornly refuses to drop the race argument when power is redistributed.
The appointment of Hannah Yeoh as minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Federal Territories) has again triggered familiar anxieties.
Not about governance, accountability, or unchecked development, but about ethnicity and religion. That instinctive response says less about Yeoh than it does about how poorly we understand where power actually lies in Kuala Lumpur.
The federal territories portfolio is not ceremonial. It is one of the most politically volatile briefs in government.
Kuala Lumpur is under intense development pressure. Residents are increasingly vocal about density and displacement, and civil society groups have long warned that the city adopts a governance model that concentrates power rather than disperses it.
Whoever holds this portfolio inherits tension by design.
Obfuscation
Instead of interrogating that structure, parts of the public debate obsessed about Yeoh’s identity, as a Chinese, non-Muslim woman, as though the race of the minister determines who benefits from urban policy.
This framing is not only inaccurate; it actively shields the real centres of power from scrutiny.
Historically, every federal territories minister before Yeoh was Malay and Muslim. Several left office amid allegations of corruption, abuse, or serious governance failures.
For example, former federal territories minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor was found guilty by the High Court of accepting RM2 million in connection with official duties during his tenure, and was later sentenced to prison and fined, but the execution of the sentence was stayed pending appeal.
Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor
He was then granted a discharge amounting to an acquittal by the Court of Appeal in 2021. The Attorney-General’s Chambers then withdrew its appeal of the acquittal, making it final.
These controversies escaped racial scrutiny. None were framed as a threat to the Malay community.
That distinction matters. When failure was associated with Malay ministers, it was treated as individual or institutional. With a non-Malay appointment, it suddenly becomes existential.
Here is the uncomfortable irony: the same system that critics claim protects Malay interests has, in practice, been administered almost entirely by Malay ministers.
Today, its failures are now being projected onto a non-Malay appointment. If past mismanagement did not weaken Malay political standing, why would reform, or continuity under a different face, suddenly do so?
An unaccountable city government
We neglect the more serious issue of governance. Kuala Lumpur does not have local elections. Its mayor is appointed, not elected. Planning, land use, and development approvals are heavily centralised, with limited statutory mechanisms for public objection or councillor oversight.
He was then granted a discharge amounting to an acquittal by the Court of Appeal in 2021. The Attorney-General’s Chambers then withdrew its appeal of the acquittal, making it final.
These controversies escaped racial scrutiny. None were framed as a threat to the Malay community.
That distinction matters. When failure was associated with Malay ministers, it was treated as individual or institutional. With a non-Malay appointment, it suddenly becomes existential.
Here is the uncomfortable irony: the same system that critics claim protects Malay interests has, in practice, been administered almost entirely by Malay ministers.
Today, its failures are now being projected onto a non-Malay appointment. If past mismanagement did not weaken Malay political standing, why would reform, or continuity under a different face, suddenly do so?
An unaccountable city government
We neglect the more serious issue of governance. Kuala Lumpur does not have local elections. Its mayor is appointed, not elected. Planning, land use, and development approvals are heavily centralised, with limited statutory mechanisms for public objection or councillor oversight.
MPs have publicly described the mayor’s authority as excessively broad, with weak checks and balances.
Setiawangsa MP Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said that the current system “concentrates authority almost entirely in the hands of the federally appointed mayor,” with little effective oversight.
The Private Member’s Bill he proposed seeks a councillor-based system to introduce greater transparency, accountability, and public representation in Kuala Lumpur.
In this context, the absence of an Urban Renewal Act matters. Without a clear legal framework governing redevelopment, displacement, compensation, and resident consent, urban renewal becomes ad hoc and opaque.
Developers operate in a permissive environment, residents feel marginalised, and political accountability becomes diffuse. These are structural conditions that would challenge any minister, irrespective of race.
Scapegoating?
However, a more uncomfortable question emerges: Is Yeoh being placed in a role designed to absorb political fallout?
This is not an accusation but a legitimate question rooted in political logic. The federal territories portfolio is a blame-heavy one.
Public anger over development, congestion, and governance will not disappear. If reforms stall or tensions escalate, responsibility will attach to the minister, and not to the prime minister, not to the system, and certainly not to entrenched interests.
Anwar Ibrahim’s governing style has consistently prioritised coalition stability and risk avoidance. Delegating a volatile portfolio while retaining strategic distance is not unusual in coalition politics.
Whether intentional or not, the effect is the same: the minister becomes the lightning rod.
This is why racialising Yeoh’s appointment is politically convenient. Race diverts attention away from structural reform. It personalises what should be institutional.
It allows those with real influence, meaning the developers, planners, and federal authorities, to remain largely unchallenged while public anger is redirected.
Even a minister’s power is limited
No one is endorsing Yeoh’s record. She is not above criticism. Questions have once been raised about transparency and accountability during her ministerial tenure, including matters involving her family that deserve scrutiny like any other public figure’s.
Acknowledging this strengthens, rather than weakens, the argument: criticism should be grounded in conduct and policy, not identity.
Some of her previous ministerial roles were constrained by the very same problem now confronting her in the federal territories portfolio: the limited authority to challenge entrenched systems.
Child marriage reforms stalled not because of one minister’s views but because of religious-political sensitivities. Sporting governance scandals exposed oversight gaps that pre-dated her tenure. These were systemic failures.
So, if Kuala Lumpur continues to be governed without democratic accountability, without transparent planning safeguards, and without a coherent urban renewal framework, then no minister will succeed.
Not a Malay minister. Not a non-Malay minister. Not Yeoh.
The real danger is not who holds the portfolio. It is that Malaysians are still debating power as though it were racial, when in reality it is institutional.
The world is moving forward, towards accountability, engagement, and rights-based urban governance, but Malaysia risks moving backwards, retreating into ethnic silos while cities are reshaped without consent.
Sixty-eight years on, perhaps the question we should be asking is not why some Malays fear Yeoh, but why we are still afraid to confront the system that fails us all.
MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army, and the president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO). Blog, X.
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