If Rafizi Ramli's recent revelation about what transpired during PKR’s Central Leadership Council meeting prior to the May 23 party polls is to be believed, then we may have to entertain a disturbing possibility: that the top leadership of PKR may be suffering from something akin to a mass psychosis.
Psychosis, in the clinical sense, is when an individual becomes estranged from reality — when their experience no longer aligns with what others are witnessing. For example, if someone sees a black dog in the corner of the room, but no one else does, it’s not the dog that’s real; it’s the disconnection from reality that is. Now, imagine not just one person, but an entire group, experiencing such divergence from commonly agreed reality — that’s mass psychosis. If you and a dozen people claim to have seen an alien descend from a UFO in Bangsar last Tuesday, but not a single other soul in Malaysia corroborates the sighting, it’s likely that you’re all entangled in a collective break from reality.
This is what seems to be happening inside PKR's leadership, at least metaphorically. According to Rafizi, during that fateful council meeting, he was publicly shouted at by Anwar Ibrahim for 20 minutes straight. In his account, Rafizi paints a picture of a hostile atmosphere, one where dissent was silenced with volume and where his concerns — particularly regarding the party’s digital voting infrastructure — were met not with reason but reprimand. Such a scene, if true, would suggest deep fissures at the very top of the party.
But here’s where things get strange. Two senior PKR figures who were also present at the meeting have come forward to say that nothing of the sort occurred. Noor Amin Ahmad, the Perlis PKR chief, said bluntly: “I was present. Don’t recall any raised voices that lasted close to half an hour.” Meanwhile, Dr Maszlee Malik, former Education Minister and a fellow council member, called Rafizi’s account “baseless and exaggerated.” According to him, “Not even for a minute did the president shout.”
How can two — or more — people who were in the same room come away with such contradictory perceptions? Was Rafizi exaggerating? Were the others covering something up? Or were the stress levels in the room so high that even basic perceptions like tone, volume, and intent fractured among the participants?
If anything, the bizarre dissonance between these accounts is less a sign of collective madness and more a mirror reflecting the sheer psychological pressure that PKR’s leadership is operating under. People under stress often perceive the same events very differently. A raised voice to one may feel like a thunderous scolding to another. A passionate disagreement may sound like a hostile attack to someone already on the defensive. And in the highly charged atmosphere of a leadership contest, where the stakes are personal, ideological, and existential, even ordinary exchanges can feel monumental.
The question isn't who is lying — perhaps no one is. The question is, how did the leadership of a major party become so brittle that its top members can’t even agree on what just happened in their own boardroom? If this is the state of internal communication and trust in PKR, the party has deeper problems than just a bruising election or a botched meeting. This disconnect is not just an anecdote; it is a symptom — of stress, of paranoia, of power strain. If the leadership is unable to distinguish perception from reality, or reconcile their own conflicting versions of it, what hope is there for the party to chart a clear path forward for the country?
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