During the Johor state election, two prominent Malaysian figures—former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang—appealed to voters along ethnic and religious lines. Dr Mahathir urged Malay voters to support Malay candidates, while Hadi argued that Johor's leadership must remain in Malay-Muslim hands to preserve that community's political standing. Yet the evidence suggests most Johor voters rejected this narrow framing, choosing instead to evaluate candidates on broader grounds. These two ageing political figures represent an increasingly antiquated approach to electoral mobilisation, one that reduces the complexity of governance to a single crude variable: ethnicity.
What makes their position particularly troubling is how it inverts the principles both men once championed. Dr Mahathir spent more than two decades as prime minister demanding that Malaysia pursue capable administration, robust economic growth, and tangible national development. His legacy rests substantially on arguments about meritocracy and professional competence. Yet now, after leading the nation across two separate tenures, he advocates selecting state leaders primarily on ancestral grounds rather than track record, experience, or demonstrable ability. The intellectual inconsistency reveals how race-based politics has become a convenient resort when other persuasive arguments fail.
PAS's parallel messaging contains its own irony. The party has repositioned itself as friendlier toward MCA and MIC precisely because those parties are Barisan Nasional members, dismissing DAP—which sits in Pakatan Harapan—as extremist. Yet many ordinary Malaysians, including many Malay voters, view PAS itself as holding extremist positions. If the criterion for electoral support has truly become alignment with particular racial blocs rather than policy substance or administrative capacity, then the very question of what constitutes extremism becomes meaningless.
The implications of this voting logic extend far beyond electoral mechanics. Consider the absurdity if citizens applied the same principle across all sectors of society. When seeking heart surgery, should patients ignore the surgeon's qualifications and ask only about ethnic background? When a house fire breaks out, should homeowners demand that firefighters prove their racial identity before deploying equipment? Should airline passengers quiz captains about their ancestry before boarding, treating flight hours and safety records as secondary? Should food delivery services hire based on ethnicity rather than reliability and professionalism? The inescapable conclusion is that governance cannot operate on this basis—yet voting along identical lines implies that leadership selection somehow operates under different rules.
The logic falters further when examined empirically. Corruption does not pause to verify identity cards before taking bribes; inflation strikes indiscriminately across all communities; potholes show no racial preference; and bureaucratic inefficiency transcends ethnic boundaries. Citizens sitting in hospital queues derive no benefit from knowing that a health minister shares their ethnicity if the healthcare system performs poorly. Citizens struggling with rising living costs gain nothing from a leader who matches their background but implements flawed economic policy. The hard reality of governance is that outcomes depend on competence, strategic thinking, institutional effectiveness, and honest administration—variables entirely independent of ancestry.
Hadi's own record strengthens this argument. PAS governs Perlis, Kedah, Terengganu, and Kelantan, yet the party's administration in these states has drawn consistent criticism for inefficiency and lack of development progress. Nevertheless, Hadi remains determined to reach federal power, and his supporters show little inclination to scrutinise performance in existing jurisdictions. This suggests that for his constituency, ethnicity and religious alignment matter far more than demonstrable governance results. If this standard were applied systematically to federal elections, Malaysia would prioritise identity over outcomes—a formula that guarantees mediocrity at best and institutional failure at worst.
There exists another troubling subtext beneath calls to vote along ethnic lines: the implicit assumption that voters of particular communities cannot judge candidates on merit. The suggestion that Malay voters require someone to point out a candidate's ethnicity before they can evaluate competence, compare policies, or recognise integrity contains a subtle contempt. It presumes Malay voters are incapable of the intellectual work that democratic participation demands. Rather than flattering the communities it claims to serve, race-based electoral messaging actually demeans them by suggesting they lack the capacity to distinguish between qualified and unqualified candidates. This patronising framing is particularly striking given that Malaysian voters across all communities have repeatedly demonstrated sophisticated political judgment when given the opportunity.
The narrowing of electoral debate along racial lines also represents a strategic choice by politicians who lack compelling answers to substantive questions. When a candidate cannot articulate a credible plan to diversify Johor's economy, improve healthcare delivery, or address infrastructure deficits, redirecting the conversation toward ethnicity becomes convenient. It transforms elections from contests over vision and capability into ethnic census exercises. This simplification may satisfy those already committed to voting along communal lines, but it alienates voters who take elections seriously as opportunities to select better governance.
Malaysia's federal system compounds these concerns. If race-based politics dominates state elections, the logic inevitably extends to general elections. At the national level, the stakes are infinitely higher—federal budgets are larger, policy decisions affect 34 million people, and institutional capacity determines whether the nation competes effectively in an increasingly complex global economy. A federal government selected primarily on ethnic rather than merit grounds would face acute challenges in managing a multi-ethnic society, navigating international trade negotiations, developing human capital, and maintaining institutional integrity. The contagion of ethnic voting cannot be contained at state level; it metastasises throughout the political system.
What remains most fundamentally absent from the appeals by Dr Mahathir and Hadi is any serious engagement with what Malaysian voters actually need. Cost of living pressures affect all communities. Unemployment impacts young people across ethnic lines. Healthcare quality matters to everyone regardless of background. Environmental degradation threatens all Malaysians. Infrastructure development benefits entire populations. Yet the race-based framework cannot address these concerns in any concrete fashion. A Malay leader who implements poor economic policy harms Malay citizens as severely as non-Malay leaders; a Muslim administrator who allows corruption harms Muslim communities along with others.
The path forward requires rejecting the false choice between unity and representation. Malaysia has always contained multiple communities with legitimate interests, and elections should reflect that reality. But reflection of community interests does not require voting primarily on ethnic grounds. Instead, voters can and should evaluate how candidates intend to serve all constituents fairly, how proposed policies will affect their own communities within the broader national interest, and whether administrative records demonstrate the competence necessary for higher office. These are the questions that separate serious electoral participation from tribal mobilisation.
The Johor result suggests that many voters have already made this distinction. They appear to have evaluated candidates more comprehensively than the simple ethnic calculus offered by Dr Mahathir and Hadi. If this pattern spreads to future elections—both at state and federal level—Malaysian politics might gradually escape the trap of race-based reasoning. The alternative is a system where merit becomes irrelevant, where institutional capacity declines, where citizens are treated as members of ethnic blocs rather than individual voters capable of critical judgment. Malaysia's future prosperity depends on rejecting this trap and insisting that political leadership reflect the entire apparatus of human capability: experience, integrity, vision, and proven competence.
