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By Mihar Dias December 2025
Every few years, Malaysian politics produces a comforting illusion: that somewhere, deep in Putrajaya, a master strategist is moving pieces across a grand chessboard, thinking 10 moves ahead while the rest of us argue on Facebook.
The latest Cabinet reshuffle has inspired exactly that kind of over-intellectualised fantasy. Is Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (PMX) engineering DAP’s political harakiri? https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
Or has DAP finally gone “power crazy,” as alleged by its right-wing critics in UMNO and PAS? https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
The honest answer is far less flattering to everyone involved: this reshuffle looks less like a grand strategy and more like the usual Malaysian cocktail of impulse, insecurity and short-term firefighting—now dressed up as 4D chess by admirers and enemies alike.
Consider the claim that appointing Hannah Yeoh as Federal Territories Minister is PMX’s “boldest chess move” to win the thinking middle. https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
It sounds impressive. It flatters PMX as a visionary willing to risk racial backlash to reset Malaysia’s political axis. It also flatters commentators, who get to feel they are decoding genius rather than watching muddling through.
But genius requires coherence. And coherence is precisely what is missing.
If PMX were truly plotting DAP’s demise—or its strategic marginalisation—why do it in a way that simultaneously hands the opposition a racial grenade and gives DAP symbolic visibility it has never had before?
Making Yeoh the first Chinese and non-Muslim Federal Territories Minister since 1976 is not subtle. Political assassins do not usually kill their targets with fireworks and a marching band.
The counter-argument, of course, is that this is a “calculated gamble”: performance will change perception; efficiency will change sentiment;
Hannah Yeoh will prove competence transcends race. If this works, PMX wins GE16 and “changes the political axis of Malaysia.” https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
If it fails, Federal Territories becomes ground zero for racial attacks.
This is not strategy. This is a PowerPoint slide.
Real strategy requires more than faith in individual competence. It requires institutional backing, economic leverage, enforcement muscle and—most inconvenient of all—political courage when the backlash inevitably comes.
To ask whether there is “ample economic power and enforcement” to defend this move is already to answer the question. https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
If the defence is hypothetical, the strategy is imaginary.
Meanwhile, PAS and UMNO are doing what they have always done: racialise, simplify, and moralise. PAS frames the reshuffle as “reforbasi,” a theft of Malay urban voices. https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
UMNO worries aloud about the fate of Bumiputera and whispers darkly about local government elections. https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
None of this is new. None of it is sophisticated. But it is effective, because it plays to anxieties PMX has neither neutralised nor redefined.
Yet the more entertaining accusation comes from the other side: that PMX is deliberately downgrading DAP, demoting its leaders, and preparing to discard it now that UMNO, GPS and GRS provide sufficient numbers.
According to this theory, PMX dreams of being crowned a Malay-Muslim hero and sees DAP as ideological baggage in that quest. https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
This line of thinking commits the same sin as the “grand chess” narrative: it assumes PMX has clarity of destination.
In reality, what we see is oscillation, not orchestration. One day courting conservatives, the next reassuring minorities.
One reshuffle promising reform, the next recycling familiar faces under new labels. This is not the behaviour of a man ruthlessly executing a long-term plan; it is the behaviour of a leader trapped between constituencies he cannot afford to lose and ideals he cannot fully abandon.
As for claims that “all his economic policies will affect the Chinese the worst,” or that replacing proven performers with less credible figures signals ideological betrayal—these criticisms may have merit, but they reveal something more mundane than conspiracy. https://focusmalaysia.my/so-is-pmx-plotting-daps-political-harakiri-or-is-dap-power-crazy-as-claimed-by-rightists-umno-pas/
They reveal a government struggling to reconcile political survival with reformist branding.
And that is the real tragedy for DAP. Not that PMX is plotting its suicide, nor that it is drunk on power, but that it remains stuck playing second fiddle in a coalition where symbolism substitutes for substance.
DAP absorbs the backlash, supplies the technocrats, and receives, in return, portfolios heavy on optics and light on structural power.
In the end, perhaps we should stop pretending this reshuffle is a historic gambit that will “change the political axis of Malaysia.” It is not that clever. It is not that brave. And it is certainly not that assured.
Sometimes, a reshuffle is just a reshuffle. And sometimes, the most dangerous illusion in politics is not malice or ambition—but the belief that someone, somewhere, truly knows what they are doing.
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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