OPINION | Anwar's Warning to Johor Candidates: Leave Najib Out of This

A day before Johoreans went to the polls, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had a specific message for every party contesting the election. Speaking in Kulai, Anwar reminded candidates to stop using the issue of Najib Razak's release as political campaign fodder, saying the focus should be on safeguarding people's welfare and managing the country's affairs instead.

It's a pointed remark, and it lands in a specific context. Anwar put it bluntly, noting that Najib is already serving his sentence and that the country is still paying off RM51 billion in 1MDB related debt, funds he said could otherwise have gone toward public facilities. "Najib is now in prison, so leave him alone. If you ask me, enough is enough," he told supporters at the Yok! Merahkan Johor! Undi Harapan event, a line that read less like a neutral appeal for clean campaigning and more like a direct rebuke of one particular narrative circulating in Johor.

That narrative has a name attached to it. Days earlier, Najib's son Nazifuddin had claimed that a major BN victory in Johor would signal continued public support for his father and a hope that he would eventually receive a royal pardon, a suggestion BN chairman Ahmad Zahid Hamidi publicly denied was part of the coalition's strategy, even as separate advocacy groups urged that no pardon be considered until all of Najib's remaining criminal cases are resolved. Najib himself is 72 and serving a six year sentence in the SRC International case, with his term not scheduled to end until August 2028, which makes any talk of imminent release largely speculative to begin with, even as it continues to dominate online chatter every time an election rolls around.

Najib's name has become a recurring flashpoint in Malaysian politics ever since his conviction, and any development in his case tends to get pulled into whatever election is happening at the time, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the actual issues on the ballot. Anwar's comment suggests he sees this pattern playing out again in Johor, with parties on more than one side reaching for Najib as a rallying cry rather than debating cost of living, jobs, or state governance.

The timing also says something about how closely Putrajaya was watching this particular state election. Johor isn't just another state poll. It's widely read as an early signal of how the federal coalition's various partners will perform once a general election eventually gets called, which means every misstep or overreach during campaigning gets magnified far beyond the state's own borders.

My Opinion

I get why Najib's name keeps surfacing. He's still one of the most recognisable figures in Malaysian politics, for better or worse, and dragging his case into unrelated elections is an easy way to stir up emotion without doing the harder work of explaining an actual policy platform. But Anwar telling everyone to knock it off, while probably sincere, also conveniently steers attention away from questions his own coalition might rather not answer either. Calling for a cleaner campaign is fair. Whether every party involved, including his own, actually followed through, is a separate question entirely.

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