Where Is Nurul Izzah?

OPINION | Where Is Nurul Izzah?


10 Feb 2026 • 1:00 PM MYT



TheRealNehruism
An award-winning Newswav creator, Bebas News columnist & ex-FMT columnist

Image credit: Yahoo

What happened to Nurul Izzah?


Does she regret contesting for the position of PKR deputy president last May? Is she overwhelmed by the responsibilities? Is she unable — or unwilling — to fully own the task she fought to obtain?


Just last week or so, this question was going through my mind, and this week I find out that this is a question that is not only swirling in my mind - it might be swirling in the minds of within PKR itself.


How so?


Well, just a couple of days ago, Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Abdul Karim recently suggested that Rafizi Ramli — not Nurul Izzah — should eventually succeed Anwar Ibrahim as PKR president and Malaysia’s next prime minister.


According to Hassan, despite Rafizi’s constant criticism of the government, Rafizi should not only not be disciplined, but instead encouraged — because his critiques are grounded in policy expertise, fiscal discipline, and governance reform.


Hassan even further by suggesting that if PH wins the next general election, Anwar should serve only one more term as prime minister, after which Rafizi should become PKR president, while Nurul Izzah remains deputy.


I find this proposal to be revealing, not only because Rafizi was defeated by Nurul Izzah in the party elections last year, but because his defeat was so bitter that he resigned as Minister of Economy and has since emerged as one of the most relentless critics of the government — often sounding more like opposition than government backbencher.


Just last week, in fact, Rafizi would even remark that unlike Anwar, he was not obsessed with becoming prime minister.


“Unlike (Anwar) whose sole preoccupation in life is to become a prime minister, I am blessed because I am very happy if I can retire quietly just like any other person, enough to survive quietly,” Rafizi wrote In a pointed post on X,


Describing himself as “easily contented” and “not sentimental,” Rafizi stressed that he has everything he needs, and that he is content with his current life and even finds time to jog daily to maintain his health.


And yet, despite this open admission that he doesn't want to hold the top post in the country just a few last week, Hassan Karim would still propose Rafizi as PKR’s future president and prime ministerial candidate, while suggesting Nurul Izzah remain deputy.


This immediately raises a disturbing question:


How badly must Nurul Izzah be performing — or how invisible must she have become — for a veteran PKR figure like Hassan Karim to publicly prefer Rafizi over her?

The Silence of the Deputy President

It has been 9 months since Nurul Izzah defeated Rafizi and assumed the post of PKR deputy president. And yet, her presence in Malaysian political life has been almost ghost-like.


This absence is astonishing, because Malaysia has not lacked politically charged issues and events since Nurul Izzah took office.


Let me just name a few:


– corruption allegations involving military-linked entities


– the escalating feud between UMNO and DAP


– the Sabah election


– UMNO’s threats to exit the unity government


– MIC’s rebellion against UMNO


– DAP’s renewed push for UEC recognition


– economic anxiety


– governance reform stagnation


Almost every week brings a fresh political storm.


And yet, Nurul Izzah has been conspicuously absent from nearly all of them.


She has not emerged as a key policy voice.


She has not become a moral compass.


She has not led political battles.


She has not shaped public discourse.


Even more tellingly, during Anwar’s cabinet reshuffle last December, Nurul Izzah failed to secure even a deputy minister position.


Let that sink in.


The deputy president of the ruling party, widely perceived as Anwar’s political heir, could not enter the cabinet — while even the much-criticised education minister managed to retain her post.


This inevitably raises another uncomfortable question:


Does even Anwar Ibrahim lack confidence in his daughter’s readiness to govern?


My Paradox: Why I Still Believe in Nurul Izzah

Personally, I place Nurul Izzah at the top of my list of potential future prime ministers, alongside Khairy Jamaluddin and Rafizi Ramli.


Of the three, she is both my top prediction and my top preference.


She is my top prediction because hers is the pathway that is clearest - Rafizi and Khairy on the hand, as the Romans say, will either have to “find a path or make one.” ("Aut viam inveniam aut faciam")


And as to why she is my top preference, well, to be bluntly honest, I think it is because she has good face. The Indians have a saying - the state of the heart can be seen in the face. ( "அகத்தின் அழகு முகத்தில் தெரியும்"). She appears, at least to me, like she has the face of a good person - or someone who thinks of others, not only herself - who is governed by restraint and conscience, not just ambition and calculation, which is of utmost value, especially in someone who might someday wield tremendous power.


With Rafizi and Khairy, i think we will just get another politician who will more or less do what every other politician does, if it comes to pass that one o them manage to rise to the top, but with Nurul, I feel that we might get something different, and between an old wine in a new bottle and something genuinely different, i think I speak for everyone when I say that we are all desperately in the mood for something truly different.


While the fact that she is a woman is being framed by some people as a political disadvantage, to me it is an advantage, because that is how exhausted I am by the endless rule of old men.


As much as I hope that Rafizi and Khairy, if they are destined to rise, will usher in the rule of younger man, I am even more welcoming of Nurul Izzah, for not only is she young, but a woman. The more different the next PM is from the last few PM's we had, the more I feel that hope will return to my heart.

But Leadership Demands One Brutal Trait: Winning

Yet idealism must confront political reality.

At the end of the day, a leader must be a winner.


Leadership is not merely about virtue. It is about the willingness to step into the arena, endure conflict, defeat rivals, and seize authority.


And on this crucial metric, Nurul Izzah appears wanting.


Nearly a year into her return to frontline politics, she remains peripheral. She has not stamped authority. She has not seized narrative space. She has not built political dominance.


In politics, absence is not neutrality — it is weakness.


Between a weak and virtuous person and one who is strong even if they are not without their vices, I truly believe that it is better to have the latter in a leadership position.


Why?


Because the weak are not really virtuous - they are just weak - and when the weak have power, power will corrupt them for the worse.


As for the strong with some vice, to be brutally honest, it might not even be such a bad thing for them to have some vice, if their vice is under control and they are capable of securing success and victories for the nation. After all, we don't want leaders who are saint - we want one that can pursue success with determination - and i have yet to see anyone who pursues success who doesn't have any vice in them,


If Nurul Izzah cannot command political gravity now, when she is party deputy president and daughter of the sitting prime minister, she is weak, and if she is weak, no matter how good she is, it is better for her and for us, to listen to Hassan Karim's counsel, and hand over the party's reign to Rafizi.

***

Nurul won't ascend any further as she suffers from 3 main disadvantage, namely:

(a) She is way too quiet which in our politics is not a very encouraging virtue;

(b) She has a Chinese husband which in our principally Malay World doesn't benefit, but nay, disadvantages her; and

(c) She is a woman, a wonderful woman but nonetheless a woman, again in a Malay World, which will treat her as a politically inconsequential.

I am not sure why Anwar pushed her into the front, to stand as Deputy President PKR when she lacks the proclivity for such a post. Perhaps Anwar wanted a 'friendlier' face next to him rather than a young ambitious man - Anwar already had too much of such in AA, etc.