Since taking office in November 2022 on the back of an unprecedented progressive-led coalition, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has managed to keep the government intact and functional through 2025. The 15th General Election had produced the country’s first-ever hung parliament, which forced Anwar’s reformist Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance to join hands with the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)’s long-dominant Barisan Nasional (BN) and Malaysian Borneo political parties of Sabah People’s Coalition (GRS) and Sarawak Parties Alliance (GPS) in an unprecedented grand coalition.
Just over three years on, Anwar’s unity government has defied the unforgiving math of Malaysian politics that felled his reformist predecessors — notably the PH administration that collapsed after only 22 months in 2020 — by holding together an unlikely government. This very survival, however, is now shaped by the unresolved politics surrounding former Prime Minister Najib Razak’s corruption convictions and the challenge of managing an unstable, ideologically divided government coalition.
A constructive course correction is therefore no longer optional. If Anwar’s so-called Madani government hopes to turn mere political survival into credible reform, the next two years will be decisive, as it demands tougher handling of corruption-linked politics and firmer control over a shaky governing coalition before Malaysia enters the runway toward the next general election due in 2028.
Razak’s corruption convictions and the political cost of reform
As the President of the ruling People’s Justice Party (PKR), Anwar rose to power on a reform-leaning, anti-graft platform, but his government’s moral authority has been dented whenever rule-of-law principles appear hostage to coalition politics. Nothing captures this dilemma more clearly than the ongoing saga of Najib. He remains imprisoned for massive corruption, but over the years, the party he once led, UMNO, has openly advocated leniency.
Najib’s corruption controversy began with the creation and control of the state-owned development fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) to attract investment and drive economic growth, which later became the center of one of the world’s largest financial scandals, exposing alleged theft of more than $4.5 billion between 2009 and 2014. The former chairman of BN was convicted in July 2020 on multiple charges linked to SRC International, a former 1MDB subsidiary. He began serving a 12-year prison sentence in August 2022 after exhausting his appeals.
In February 2024, Najib was surprisingly granted a partial royal pardon by then Malaysian King Abdullah of Pahang, with the Pardons Board halving his sentence to six years and reducing his fine from 210 million ringgit ($44.5 million) to 50 million ringgit ($10.8 million), though it stopped short of granting his release. Subsequently, Najib applied for house arrest in April 2024; the High Court rejected the request in July 2024, and the matter was appealed.
The issue came to a head in December 2025, when the High Court not only rejected Najib’s audacious bid to serve his sentence under house arrest but, days later, convicted him in the main 1MDB trial of four counts of abuse of power and 21 counts of money laundering, sentencing him to 15 years’ imprisonment and imposing fines totalling 11.4 billion ringgit ($2.8 billion).
Although Najib has appealed both his conviction and sentence, the rulings affirm that Malaysia’s courts are prepared to hold even former prime ministers to account. Regardless, the political storm surrounding it highlighted the pressure on Anwar’s unity government — and the perception of wavering commitment to reform.
UMNO’s reaction to its long-time president’s courtroom defeat was furious, as several senior figures denounced the decision as an affront to Malay royal authority and called for the party to withdraw from Anwar’s governing coalition. Such rhetoric laid bare the coalition’s fault line that UMNO’s priority is rehabilitating its patronage networks, whereas Anwar’s PH camp is rooted in promises of clean governance.
Now, fortunately for Anwar, pressure over Najib has not coalesced into a unified offensive from the main opposition. The National Alliance (PN) — anchored by its core parties, Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Bersatu) and Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), and supported by smaller partners such as Malaysian People’s Movement Party (Gerakan), and Malaysian Indian People’s Party (MIPP) — has adopted mixed positions and thus failed to form a coherent position on Najib’s prosecutions.
Some leaders within PN have invoked constitutional arguments regarding the royal prerogative, while others have been noticeably cautious about any posture that could be read as defending a figure emblematic of 1MDB-era corruption. The divide arguably exposes a deeper clash between PAS’s Islamist orientation and Bersatu’s Malay-primacy nationalism — a party born of UMNO defections in 2016 — compounded by unresolved questions over PN’s leadership and prime ministerial direction that leaves the coalition unable to sustain a unified line on Najib.
The sharpest political pressure on Anwar, consequently, has come not from the opposition benches but from inside his own coalition, where latent tensions between BN’s UMNO and PH’s Democratic Action Party (DAP) continue to test the limits of ideological coexistence over issues of reform priorities. And this emphasizes that Najib — after a nine-year Malaysian premiership — still looms large over Malaysian politics. Yet, he serves not as a rallying cause so much as a fault line that reveals deeper divides over accountability and power.
Caught in the middle, Anwar tried to stay above the fray — reiterating that he does not interfere in court cases and that due process must run its course. He formally kept his hands clean, but his cautious silence on UMNO’s pro-Najib lobbying was widely interpreted as ambivalence and not neutrality.
Many reform-minded Malaysians who voted for change in 2022 expected Anwar to firmly reject any backroom deals for Najib or other kleptocrats. Instead, they witnessed prosecutors under Anwar’s watch drop or defer cases involving high-profile UMNO-related figures, most notably Deputy Prime Minister and BN Chairman Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Najib Razak.
Anwar, in reclaiming the reform narrative, must reassert an unambiguous doctrine of noninterference and institutional reform. The Prime Minister should publicly affirm that coalition politics will not dictate the fate of corruption cases — no matter who is implicated. Beyond statements, his government needs to accelerate structural changes that insulate the rule of law from political bargains.
The reality, however, is less forgiving. Reformist governments are judged most harshly when their own allies, rather than their opponents, put their principles to the test. For Anwar’s administration, these commitments must therefore be implemented in the years ahead, specifically in 2026, if the Madani government is to regain some of the reformist credibility that the compromises of coalition governance have clouded.
Balancing power in a diverse, fragile coalition
Holding together a diverse coalition has been Anwar’s most notable achievement, but it has come at the expense of reform momentum, as 2025 showed. The year saw the prime minister navigating a series of political aftershocks, from state election setbacks to cabinet infighting, which he addressed through tactical concessions that, to critics, looked more like managing power than transforming it.
The clearest example came from the Sabah state election in November 2025, a regional poll that delivered a sharp electoral setback to Anwar’s federal alliance. PH — comprising PKR, DAP and the National Trust Party — along with its national partners, won only one of the 20 seats it contested in the Sabah assembly.
Voters in Sabah gravitated toward local parties running on “Sabah for Sabahans” platforms that reflect grievances about neglect and unmet promises of autonomy. And although an Anwar-aligned local coalition, GRS, retained control of the state, it did so strictly on Sabah-centric terms. The October 2025 Kota Kinabalu High Court ruling only hardened these attitudes by giving legal weight to Sabah’s claims of fiscal marginalization, turning autonomy demands into a concrete constitutional grievance that sharpened voter skepticism and raised the political cost for Anwar’s federal government of deferring reform.
Anwar’s response, thereafter, was a long-anticipated cabinet reshuffle in mid-December 2025, framed as a refresh to improve economic delivery but ultimately amounting to coalition maintenance. Several vacancies had opened up after two Anwar protégés — Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli and Natural Resources Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad — resigned in May 2025 following defeats in PKR’s party leadership elections, while Entrepreneur and Cooperative Development Minister Ewon Benedick stepped down in November 2025 in protest over the federal government’s stance on Sabah’s revenue entitlement, giving the prime minister an opportunity to rebalance portfolios among coalition allies.
The reshuffle brought in a Federal Territories Minister, Hannah Yeoh, from DAP — a predominantly Malaysian Chinese, urban-based party — likely to shore up the urban non-Malay base in the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya, even as it drew pushback from Malay nationalists.
More notably, Anwar increased Sabah-linked representation by appointing Natural Resources Minister Arthur Joseph Kurup, along with Sabah and Sarawak Affairs Minister Mustapha Sakmud, as part of damage-control efforts following PH’s poor performance in the recent 17th Sabah state election. Likewise, to consolidate support ahead of the 20th Sarawak state election, expected by early 2027, GPS now holds five cabinet posts and six deputy ministerial posts, in which Anwar’s configuration is designed to project federal attentiveness to Sarawak’s interests. Together with parallel adjustments involving Sabah and Sarawak, these moves strengthen Anwar’s message that East Malaysian partners remain critical to keeping the coalition together.
Yet despite replacing more than a third of his cabinet, Anwar, as PH Chairman, was careful to keep each coalition partner’s share of power intact. His original political home, UMNO — the Malay-centric party and strongman of Malaysian politics — retained substantial influence, including several key ministerial portfolios, in return for its continued loyalty.
Far from reset, the reshuffle amounted to little more than political musical chairs, with changes largely confined to swapping positions rather than direction that prioritized coalition balance and stability, as well as projected confidence in Anwar’s existing team, over any decisive shift in policy. This approach speaks to Anwar’s overarching strategy since consolidating power in 2023, which prioritizes coalition survival over potentially divisive reforms. It has worked, insofar as the unity government still stands and even looks relatively stable heading into 2026.
What’s next for Anwar Ibrahim’s unity government?
As 2025 draws to a close, Anwar has demonstrated that the Madani government can survive the rough math of coalition politics, but it remains an open question whether it can inspire the confidence of a truly reformist government.
The next major tests of coalition cohesion — and by extension, the unity government’s durability — loom over the next two years. The calendar opens with by-elections in January 2026, including the Sabah state seat of Lamag and the federal seat of Kinabatangan. These contests will then give way to full state polls, with the Sarawak state election due by April 2027, followed by Melaka by February 2027 and Johor by June 2027, collectively placing sustained pressure on the governing coalition as it defends its unity across multiple political fronts.
And for Anwar, the good news is that he enters this electoral cycle from a position of relative strength, as the opposition remains mired in disorder. PN enters 2026 in disarray, following former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s (2020-2021) resignation — effective January 2026 — as the coalition’s chairman, and the departures of several senior leaders, which together created a leadership vacuum.
The recent Perlis political crisis and unresolved arguments over leadership succession and ideological direction have aggravated rivalry between Bersatu and PAS. And that dysfunction sharply limits its capacity to challenge Anwar’s government, which would tilt the political terrain in his favor ahead of the coming state elections.
Regardless of the opposition’s weakness, Anwar’s more immediate risk lies within his own coalition. Its internal contradictions have repeatedly slowed or blunted the reform agenda Malaysians were promised. Anwar’s decades-long struggle to reach the premiership has equipped him with political resilience, but staying power alone will not carry him through the next electoral cycle.
If reforms continue to stall and state-level losses mount, partner confidence could erode, raising the political costs of inaction. With the 16th General Election due by February 2028 and political positioning accelerating by 2027, his legitimacy will hinge less on survival than on visible delivery.
[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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