‘Our country’: Anwar calls on Malaysia to move past racial politics nearly 70 years after independence

MALAYSIA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has issued a pointed call for Malaysia to leave racial politics behind, telling an audience at the Chinese Cultural Night 2026 in Kota Laksamana, Melaka, that the country cannot continue to be trapped in communal disputes that make children from different communities feel like strangers in their own land.

According to New Straits Times (NST), the event was also attended by Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Minister Steven Sim Chee Keong and Melaka State Secretary Datuk Salhah Salleh. In the same function, Anwar traced the roots of Malaysia’s racial political dynamic, from the survival-focused communalism of the 1950s and 1960s to what he described as its exploitation by desperate politicians in later decades.

“When people became desperate, they used racial issues,” he said, as quoted by NST. “When I say ‘our country’, I do not mean that I want to undermine the position of others, no. We accept the rights of the Malay Rulers and what is enshrined in the Federal Constitution. But it is important to stress that our children should not feel like strangers in their own country.”

Anwar framed the issue not as a political matter but as one of national survival. “How can any country survive like this? How many years have we been independent? Almost 70 years. Are we still not done discussing and fighting? Whose country is it? Our country,” he said.

He invoked the founding generation of Malaysian leaders, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Tan Siew Sin, and Tun Sambanthan, as examples of politicians who thought about what was best for the country rather than their respective communities, before politics “became complicated.”

Anwar said Malaysia was now at an important social, cultural, and political juncture, and that all parties must have the courage to reject approaches that undermine national unity.

The PM’s mandate

Anwar was explicit about his own obligations as prime minister. “I must look after the Malays, I must look after the Chinese, I must look after the Indians, the Ibans, the Kadazans. If I do not, I am not fit to be prime minister. The prime minister must look after everyone, with courage and confidence,” he was quoted as saying by NST.

The speech arrives in the context of a politically charged week in Malaysia, following the Najib Razak pardon decision and its attendant racial and political fault lines. Anwar’s call for unity, which was delivered at a Chinese cultural event, carries additional weight in that context, signalling an intention to hold the coalition’s multicultural foundation together at a moment when it faces internal stress.

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