Three years ago, the 47-year-old Mohd Rafizi Ramli was one of the brightest stars in the nascent Unity Government under Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim, one of the prime minister’s closest lieutenants, a chartered accountant who had uncovered a series of spectacular scandals in the Barisan Nasional government headed by the disgraced Najib Razak. An engaging public speaker from a humble background, Rafizi left a successful career more than a decade ago with the national energy company Petronas to eventually become secretary general and vice president of Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat. Today, he is almost an afterthought, the ministry playing second fiddle to the more powerful finance ministry, and as PKR vice president and general secretary, being left out of key leadership decisions. His political fate could well be decided in internal central and branch-level party politicking that has been going on since March 14 and due to be concluded tomorrow, May 23, with 9,000 delegates voting in person and another 20,000 online. Along with Ramli’s political fate, also to be decided is the question of whether Anwar, the party leader, wants to build a political dynasty. Rafizi’s opponent is Nurul Izzah Anwar, the premier’s daughter, 44, who has been at Anwar’s side throughout the decades of prison and political wilderness he went through following his 1998 falling-out with then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. His decision to bring her in as secretary general to supplant Rafizi, if she wins, has predictably stirred accusations of nepotism. Mahathir, now in retirement at age 99 but still acerbic, gave the game away when he was asked about the nepotism charge by saying he never commented on family matters. Nurul Izzah has sought to blunt claims that her candidacy signals nepotism and dynastic politics. “I believe that those who read this statement with rationality can distinguish between nepotism – being appointed to a position by a family member – and a position attained through a contest voted on by the grassroots,” she said in a prepared statement. Anwar, who turns 78 on August 10, will be nearing 80 or past at the time of the next general election, which according to parliamentary rules must be held before February 7, 2028. Family connections are hardly anything new. His wife Wan Azizah Wan Ismail held crucial political offices on Anwar’s behalf in a bid to keep his influence alive while he was being tried twice and sent to prison on charges regarded as trumped up. She most notably served as PKR’s first president from the time the party was formed to officially handing it over to him after his release from prison. Given her father’s position at the head of the party, which leads the seven-party Unity government which has ruled Malaysia since 2022, Nurul Izzah is the odds-on candidate. She reportedly has the public support of more than 200 of the 222 party division leaders. She co-chairs the Secretariat of the Special Advisory Body to the Ministry of Finance and can count in her van key party establishment figures who support forging closer ties with the scandal-tarred United Malays National Organization, which headed the Barisan Nasional which was driven from power for good in November of 2022, a plan regarded by many of Kuala Lumpur’s reformers with horror. The campaign, for good or ill, has been branded “Noise vs Peace,” as pointed out in a headline by the news portal Free Malaysia Today. It is a literal translation. Rafizi has named his campaign “Hiruk,” which literally translates to “noise” vs her “Damai,” or “Peace.” It has been a slugfest, with allegations of vote-buying and other problems. More than 280 complaints have been received from rank-and-file party members about the divisional elections. Rafizi came into politics as a party star in 2013. Born to a family of rubber tappers, he shined in school, then qualified as a chartered accountant in the UK followed by several top positions including managing the petrochemical assets of the national energy company Petronas. He almost immediately generated a considerable fuss by exposing overpriced tender projects and government purchases of overpriced assets – and what inevitably became known as the “Cowgate” scandal, in which the UMNO Minister for Women, Family and Community Development, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil and her family were allegedly found to have misused RM250 million in public funds meant for a government-owned National Feedlot Corporation state cattle ranch in Negeri Sembilan. Shahrizat was cleared of the allegations despite the evidence and Rafizi earned a 30-month prison sentence for “exposing state secrets” for making the facts public. He had to give up politics temporarily although the case was eventually dropped. Rafizi was appointed economics minister when the party came to power in 2022 but, according to a well-placed lawyer in Kuala Lumpur, “He lost favor. He lost, they put him in difficult ministry, with the major economic decisions being made elsewhere, and he was never given a chance to shine. Frankly, he didn’t wear well with people. In a Malay society, you can’t be confrontational. He was no great people person in the way he behaved in the party.” Conversely Nurul’s candidacy has raised allegations that a new political dynasty is being hatched, which critics say is a violation of the principles of Anwar’s Reformasi philosophy, which has been considerably battered in any case by other questions including his selection of UMNO leader Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as deputy prime minister – while Zahid was in the middle of a criminal fraud trial for allegedly looting a charity he started seemingly for no other reason to loot it. There are real issues here for the party and the country, as indicated by the fact that Zahid was somehow given a “DNAA” – a dismissal not amounting to acquittal on the cases related to the charity. Anwar’s government, while performing enviably on the economic front, with growth driven by the services and manufacturing sectors and torrid foreign direct investment before the Trump tariff depredations, has disappointed many of its onetime ardent supporters by turning away from the Reformasi slogan that sustained his supporters’ hopes during his long periods in the political wilderness. There is little in Nurul Izzah’s “Damai” campaign that would return the party to that goal although she has long been praised – as much as Rafizi – as a reformer. Rafizi, in his Hiruk campaign, wants to return to the party’s decades of reformist zeal that brought it to power bewitched foreign observers over Anwar, turning away from Nurul Izzah’s big tent and cooperation with parties like UMNO, most of whose leaders except for former Prime Minister Najib Razak, the architect of the 1Malaysia Development Bhd debacle, have yet to be brought to court for the astonishing level of corruption that tarnished the entire country during the late stages of the Barisan Nasional’s rule. The party’s national congress, along with its youth and women’s wing assemblies, has been underway from May 21 to 24, with polling for the central leadership elections scheduled for tomorrow. This is among the stories/excerpts we choose to make widely available.If you wish to get the full Asia Sentinel experience and access more exclusive content, please do subscribe to us for US$10/month or US$100/year.
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'Peace vs. Noise' Battle For Leadership of Malaysia's PKR
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