From Khairy to Akmal: When Malay Champions Go Quiet

OPINION | From Khairy to Akmal: When Malay Champions Go Quiet


11 Jan 2026 • 1:00 PM MYT



Annan Vaithegi
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Image Source: HotFM


There is a pattern in Malaysian politics that has repeated itself so often it now feels almost scripted. A young champion rises, speaking in the name of Malays. He is articulate, energetic, combative. He frames politics as a battle Malays versus everyone else and positions himself as the one brave enough to fight. For a while, the noise works. Then reality intervenes. And suddenly, the champion goes quiet.


If one traces this arc from around 2008 onwards, the comparison becomes unavoidable. Khairy Jamaluddin once styled himself as a modern Malay champion fluent in global language yet anchored in Malay political anxieties. In his early years, Khairy fought loudly for Malay rights, often framing debates as cultural defence rather than structural reform. Over time, however, the limits of that framing became obvious. Malaysia’s problems were not about who threatened Malays culturally; they were about corruption, governance failure, and elite excess. Khairy adjusted. His tone softened. Eventually, he abandoned much of the racial rhetoric that once powered his rise.


Today, Dr Akmal Saleh appears to be walking a strikingly similar path but faster, louder, and with less self‑reflection.


Akmal’s rise has been driven by a brand of politics that is intensely emotional and aggressively racialised. He presents himself as a defender of Malay dignity, warning constantly of erosion, disrespect, and threat. His language is sharp. His posture is confrontational. Like Khairy in his earlier phase, Akmal treats volume as proof of sincerity and outrage as evidence of courage.


But the trouble with this kind of politics is that it demands an enemy. And too often, that enemy is not corruption, not elite capture, not economic inequality but other Malaysians. Indians. Chinese. Minorities become shorthand for threat. Statements slide from grievance into insult, from critique into accusation, until what remains is not principled politics but racial resentment.


This is where idealism collides with reality. Akmal appears to believe that UMNO’s presence in government is a moral question that the party should leave if its demands are not met. That may sound principled, even heroic. But UMNO does not operate on idealism. It operates on power.


What Akmal appears to have underestimated is not public reaction, but the nature of the party he serves. UMNO’s centre of gravity has never rested with its youth wing, nor with moral appeals shouted from below. It rests with its warlords figures whose political survival depends on remaining close to power, close to Cabinet, and close to the machinery that sustains influence and lifestyle.


For Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and the entrenched UMNO elite, staying in government is not an ideological choice. It is an existential one. Ministerial positions are not symbols of reform; they are shields. They provide access, relevance, and insulation in a political environment shaped by past scandals and unresolved accountability. This is not conjecture. It is how UMNO has functioned for decades.


Against this reality, Akmal’s posture was almost painfully idealistic. He spoke as if UMNO were a movement guided by principle, when in truth it operates as a structure governed by leverage. Moral pressure does not move such a party. Numbers do. Control does. Patronage does.


To challenge UMNO’s leadership without commanding any of these is not bravery it is miscalculation.


When Zahid rejected the call to exit the unity government, the moment of reckoning arrived quickly. Akmal’s subsequent suggestion that it might be time to step down landed not as martyrdom, but as retreat. The silence that followed felt familiar. Malaysians have seen this ending before.


The tragedy here is not personal. It is political. Leaders who claim to fight for Malays often end up narrowing the very future they say they want to protect. By sidelining non‑Malays and framing politics as a racial contest, they reduce national discourse to emotion while the real theft continues elsewhere.


Because the greatest theft from Malaysians has never come from outside. It has come from corruption, abuse of power, and elite self‑enrichment. While ordinary citizens argue about identity, leaders who speak loudly in the name of race quietly capture contracts, positions, and privileges.


Other countries argue about economic growth, industrial strategy, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and global competitiveness. Malaysia, meanwhile, still finds itself trapped in arguments about who truly belongs and who supposedly takes too much. While the rakyat debate race, opportunities disappear not because of minorities, but because leadership is distracted and compromised.


If Akmal were truly sincere, maturity would have demanded a different path. He could have confronted corruption within his own party before attacking others. He could have articulated a Malay future rooted in education, productivity, and inclusion rather than perpetual grievance. He could have chosen reform over rhetoric.


Instead, the politics of outrage ran its course. And like many before him, the champion who shouted the loudest now faces the quietest moment of all.


Malaysia does not need more leaders who weaponise race to prove courage. It needs leaders Indian, Malay, Chinese, who are prepared to speak honestly about development, technology, governance, and the future. The next generation will not be impressed by who shouts the loudest. They will judge who actually delivers.


The question is no longer whether Akmal will step down. It is whether Malaysia will finally step away from a politics that mistakes noise for leadership and division for strength.


Annan Vaithegi, writes that Malaysia does not suffer from a shortage of loud voices. It suffers from a shortage of leaders willing to lower the volume and raise the responsibility.