There are many ways to criticise a Cabinet reshuffle. One can argue about competence, coherence, reform priorities, or whether the prime minister is merely rearranging chairs on a sinking ship. PAS, however, has chosen a far more familiar and far less imaginative route: race.
In responding to Anwar Ibrahim’s latest Cabinet reshuffle, PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan did not question whether Kuala Lumpur is better governed, whether housing affordability will improve, or whether local authorities are more accountable. Instead, PAS warned Malaysians about something far more alarming, at least in its worldview — that urban management is becoming “too Chinese”.
The trigger, apparently, is the appointment of Hannah Yeoh as federal territories minister, the retention of Nga Kor Ming as housing and local government minister, and the presence of Lo Su Fui as deputy minister. To PAS, this combination is not merely a political arrangement within a coalition government, but a civilisational threat: “the concentration of urban power in the hands of leaders from the same ethnicity and political party”.
“Such a concentration of power is bound to create serious public unease, especially with controversial initiatives such as the proposed Urban Redevelopment Act.
“The Act is seen as potentially marginalising certain urban communities, particularly the Malays and low-income groups, including through the potential loss of their property rights,” he said in a statement.
Takiyuddin also said remarked that there was a widespread perception, a perception that was only perceptible to Takiyuddin, that yesterday’s appointments were not based on merit or policy needs, but because of political pressure.
From Urban management, he alluded that that DAP’s renewed push for Unified Examination Certificate (UEC) recognition might also have been a factor in how the cabinet reshuffle turned out.
“If Cabinet positions are used to maintain the support and loyalty of any party… this is clearly a serious erosion of principled governance and institutions,” he said, adding that it weakened the integrity of the national policy-making and legislative process
This is a remarkable claim, not least because it exposes how PAS understands power. For PAS, power is not about institutions, laws, checks and balances, or outcomes. Power is about who you are — your race — and where you sit — preferably not in the city.
Urban Malaysia, in PAS’s imagination, is no longer a space of economic complexity and demographic diversity. It is a racial battlefield, and DAP’s presence is framed as domination rather than representation. The fact that these leaders were appointed through constitutional processes, within a unity government, seems irrelevant. What matters is that they are Chinese, and that they govern cities.
To make this racial anxiety sound principled, PAS wraps it in the language of governance. Takiyuddin warns of “imbalances of power”, insufficient “checks and balances”, and the danger of a single party shaping urban policy. Yet PAS’s concern is oddly selective. The same party rarely worries about concentration of power when religious authorities expand their reach, or when state governments under PAS rule centralise decision-making in the name of moral order.
Checks and balances, it seems, only become an issue when the people holding office are not Malay-Muslim.
The Urban Redevelopment Act (URA) is then wheeled out as evidence of looming catastrophe. PAS claims the Act could marginalise Malays and low-income communities, potentially stripping them of property rights. This is a legitimate concern worth debating. Urban redevelopment everywhere carries risks of displacement and gentrification.
But PAS does not argue against the Act on policy grounds. It racialises the issue. The danger is not redevelopment per se, but redevelopment managed by the “wrong” people. The implication is clear: if urban land and housing are overseen by Chinese leaders, Malay interests will inevitably suffer.
This is not policy critique. It is ethnic suspicion dressed up as public concern.
PAS further claims that these appointments were made due to political pressure from DAP, not merit or administrative need. Once again, this is an argument that could be explored seriously — coalition politics is indeed transactional. But PAS undermines its own case by tying the allegation to race and to speculative fears about UEC recognition, an issue PAS habitually treats as an existential threat rather than an educational policy question.
The irony here is hard to miss. PAS accuses the government of eroding principled governance, yet it is PAS itself that reduces governance to racial arithmetic. PAS warns of weakened institutions, while insisting that legitimacy depends not on performance or accountability, but on ethnic composition.
DAP Youth’s response was predictable but necessary. By pointing out that questioning appointments based on race is discriminatory, they exposed the core problem with PAS’s argument. A party that routinely claims to practise “mature and responsible politics” is once again retreating into the oldest and laziest trope in Malaysian politics: fear of the Other.
What PAS is really expressing is not concern over urban governance, but discomfort with urban reality. Cities are diverse. Cities are plural. Cities vote differently. Urban Malaysia has long rejected PAS’s worldview, and PAS has never quite forgiven it for that.
Unable to win cities electorally, PAS seeks to delegitimise them ideologically. Urban centres become suspect spaces, urban policies become conspiracies, and urban leaders become agents of ethnic takeover. This is not new. It is the same rural-versus-urban resentment, repackaged with Cabinet portfolios as the latest excuse.
There is also a deeper contradiction at play. PAS routinely champions Islamic universalism and moral justice, yet its politics remain trapped in racial defensiveness. If PAS truly believed in justice, it would argue that policies must protect the poor regardless of race, that redevelopment must be fair regardless of who manages it, and that governance must be judged by outcomes, not surnames.
Instead, PAS signals to its base that Chinese leadership in cities is inherently dangerous — a message that may mobilise fear, but does nothing to improve governance or national unity.
In the end, PAS’s accusation tells us more about PAS than about the Cabinet reshuffle. It reveals a party uncomfortable with plural power, uneasy with urban modernity, and unable to engage policy without invoking race. It is easier to say cities are “too Chinese” than to admit that PAS has failed to make itself relevant to urban Malaysians of any race.
Urban management is not “too Chinese”. It is simply too complex, too diverse, and too modern for a politics that still sees the country through a racial keyhole.
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