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Dinosaurs With Manifestos
By Mihar Dias June 2026
Someone sent me a graphic this week that stopped me mid-sip of my morning coffee. https://www.facebook.com/share/1CxjhHbiWc/
It showed the leadership lineup of Parti Wawasan — Malaysia's newest political party, founded presumably on the wawasan of a brighter tomorrow — and the ages of its top four leaders.
Eighty-four. Sixty-nine. Seventy-six. Seventy-seven.
The graphic, rather helpfully, included a ballot box image at the bottom. In the left panel: two dinosaurs. In the right panel: an X.
I did not need a political science degree to decode the message.
Now, I want to be careful here. I am myself of a certain vintage. I do not throw stones at age. Age brings wisdom, gravitas, institutional memory, and — in Malaysian politics — apparently an inexhaustible appetite for one more comeback. What I do find mildly amusing, in the way that a man finds a banana peel amusing after someone else has slipped on it, is the timing.
We are, at this precise moment in Malaysian political discourse, consumed by the urgent, passionate, almost evangelical call for young leaders. Every forum has a panel about it. Every party convention ends with a rousing resolution about it. Youth wings deliver speeches about it — and then hand the microphone back to the 70-year-old patron sitting in the front row.
Parti Wawasan has, with admirable efficiency, assembled a leadership team whose combined age is three hundred and six years.
To put that in perspective: three hundred and six years ago, the British East India Company had not yet figured out that Penang existed. Three hundred and six years of collective experience, and the party's logo — I am not making this up — features the word Wawasan. Vision. Forward-looking. Horizons yet to be reached.
The Pengerusi is Rais Yatim, 84, a man who has served under so many Prime Ministers that his political CV reads like a table of contents for Malaysian history. The Presiden is Hamzah Zainuddin, 69, who has previously worn the jerseys of UMNO, Bersatu, and now Wawasan — a political hat-trick that suggests either extraordinary flexibility or extraordinary restlessness, depending on your sympathy. The Naib Presiden is Rahim Thamby Chik, 76 — a name that will cause a certain generation of Malaysians to pause and say things they would rather not print in a family publication. And the AJK is Ibrahim Abu Shah, 77, completing what might be described, generously, as a leadership mosaic of the post-Merdeka era.
What we have here is not so much a political party as a reunion dinner that filed for registration with the Registrar of Societies.
And yet — and here is where the cynicism curdles into something more wistful — can we really blame them? When was the last time Malaysian politics made meaningful room for the young? When a 35-year-old rises in a party meeting, the elders smile indulgently, the way you smile at a child who has just announced he wants to be an astronaut. Bagus, bagus. Very good. Now sit down while we discuss the matter among ourselves.
We have been "encouraging young leaders to come forward" since at least 1990. Those young leaders are now in their fifties and still waiting.
In this context, Wawasan is simply being honest. They have dispensed with the pretence. No tokenistic youth deputy, no obligatory 40-year-old as window dressing. Just four men who have seen governments rise and fall, who have outlasted policies and parties and political fashions, who have watched Malaysia evolve from a country with one television channel to a country with seventeen political parties and still only one functioning narrative.
Give them credit for authenticity.
The dinosaurs on that ballot paper, I suspect, do not mind the comparison one bit.
After all — the dinosaurs ruled for 165 million years.
The young Turks are still waiting for their turn at the microphone.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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