The missing link: How scrapping local elections trapped communities in poverty

By Noraisah Yusop

Poverty in Malaysia is not just about income but about institutions – who controls resources and whose voices matter in policymaking – a deeper struggle over power, equity and representation.

For people living in poverty, the state is the overcrowded clinic, the leaking school roof, and the undelivered housing project.

Urban poverty persists in Kuala Lumpur’s flats, where life remains precarious and many families are trapped in relative poverty. Sabah and Sarawak remain underdeveloped despite resource wealth, while Penang sees rising relative poverty in less connected districts.

The 13th Malaysian Plan’s promises of ‘transit-oriented development, industrialised building systems, and building information modelling may streamline construction, but without enforcement Malaysia risks building faster without building better. Technology cannot replace accountability.

For Malaysia, the lesson is clear: development is political.

The erosion of local elections and state powers into federal control has narrowed the channels of accountability, weakening the institutions needed to manage inequality.

Restoring local government elections is thus not merely about reviving a democratic institution. It is about rebalancing Malaysia’s federal system, reconnecting ordinary people with governance, and ensuring development reflects local needs rather than centralised priorities.

It is often said that ordinary people misunderstand the role of their MPs and state assembly members – that they are lawmakers, not ‘drain-fixers’. In theory, this is true.

Yet the lived reality tells a different story.

Since local government elections were suspended in 1965, ordinary people have had no direct democratic channel to hold local councils accountable. Councillors are appointed and councils remain financially dependent on state governments.

In this vacuum, MPs and assembly members inevitably become the first point of contact for everything from clogged drains to rubbish collection.

Blaming people for a lack of political literacy oversimplifies the problem. People know where responsibilities ought to lie, but they also know that local councils lack independence, transparency and legitimacy.

When institutions fail, the people naturally turn to the representatives they can vote out.

Elected representatives cannot hide behind constitutional definitions of their role while ignoring the institutional weaknesses that force people to over-rely on them.

To say an MP cannot be expected to visit every longhouse or village each week is fair. But the deeper question is why federalism has failed to devolve adequate resources and decision-making authority closer to the people.

Decentralisation and good governance

Malaysia is constitutionally a federation, but in practice, the federal government controls the lion’s share of revenue, education, policing and development planning.

Even state governments, particularly in the peninsula, are heavily constrained by financial dependence on Putrajaya.

Sabah and Sarawak are often cited as exceptions due to their special autonomy under the Malaysia Agreement 1963. Yet complaints from these states remain consistent: centralised decision-making has slowed rural development, restricted fiscal space, and complicated service delivery in vast constituencies where infrastructure is still poor.

Decentralisation can foster good governance.

State and, more so, local governments are closer to everyday realities and more responsive to community needs. This proximity allows planning and service delivery to be tailored more effectively.

Globally, decentralisation has become a recognised trend, endorsed by the UN’s development agencies, the World Bank and scholars and practitioners alike. Both developed and developing countries have pursued this path.

This shift reflects the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that higher levels of government should not monopolise functions that can be carried out efficiently and economically by lower levels, such as managing water, electricity, public transport, schools or universities.

In democracies committed to decentralisation, these essential services are usually managed by local councils or state authorities, enabling greater community involvement in planning, monitoring and implementation.

When decisions are made closer to the people, accountability improves, and the people can better relate to policies and policymakers.

Truncated franchise

Take Yah Kuchai, a single mother, lives in a high-rise flat in Cheras.

Her mornings begin in a rush: sending two children to school, then queuing for hours at the local clinic where both staff and parking spaces are limited.

The council promises repairs, but the councillors – appointed, not elected – never show up. When the lift breaks down, she calls her MP’s office not because she believes Parliament should fix elevators, but because she knows the council will not.

For her, democracy is not measured in fiery speeches but in whether the rubbish is collected before the rats come.

Before independence, local democracy was alive and well. Local government elections existed in parts of colonial Malaya, though details of their exact introduction dates vary in historical records. These early municipal elections were abolished by the British in 1913, citing colonial paternalism.

Yet by the early 1950s, as Britain prepared to leave, elections were revived.

By 1957, more than 370 elected councils dotted the peninsula, with over 3,000 councillors.

These local councils were noisy, imperfect, but alive. A reminder that democracy is not only about parliaments and ministers, but also about clogged drains, unpaved roads and clean water.

The Constitution of 1957 reflected this balance, placing local government under the state list (senarai negeri), while town planning and housing were put in the concurrent list (senarai bersama).

But crises in the 1960s and 1970s led to the suspension and eventual abolition of local elections, with constitutional changes centralising power and eroding both local democracy and state autonomy.

The Indonesian Confrontation of the 1960s, followed by the racial riots of 1969, gave cover to suspend local elections. A royal commission led by Athi Nahappan recommended restoring them, but the report was shelved.

By 1974, constitutional amendments had pulled powers away from the states. Two years later, the Local Government Act abolished elections altogether.

What emerged was a “truncated franchise”.

People could vote at federal and state levels but were denied a say in the governance closest to their daily lives.

More broadly, the erosion of the state list and concurrent list into the federal list (senarai persekutuan) hollowed out the federal balance of 1957, centralising decision-making in Putrajaya.

This truncated franchise, as scholars later called it, narrowed the channels of accountability.

Top-down development produced highways and industrial parks but often ignored the school without a field and apartment blocks where poverty lingered.

In rural Sarawak, a community leader still waits for promises. His longhouse is hours away from the nearest paved road.

During elections, politicians arrive in 4x4s, shaking hands and promising bridges. It has been 60 years now.

“We have been waiting since my father’s time,” he says.

What is wrong with a system that delivers so little improvement year after year, for generations?

The flaw is structural. Without fiscal decentralisation, councils and even states remain dependent on transfers from Putrajaya.

Unlike Indonesia’s district-level reforms or the participatory budgeting experiments in the Philippines, Malaysia’s local governance became dependent, risk-averse and silent.

For Malaysia, the question is not only about growth but about trust.

Restoring local elections would not just revive a dormant institution. It would reconnect people with governance and allow development to reflect the needs of Cheras flats as much as longhouses in Kapit.

The 13th Malaysia Plan is pitched as a people-centred plan, one that aspires to dignity and inclusion.

It requires reform: loosening the grip of the centre, sharing power, trusting people to decide.

Development is not neutral. The future depends on whether that negotiation between a single mother in Cheras, a Temenggong in Sarawak, and the ministers in Putrajaya can finally be made inclusive.

Dr Noraisah Yusop is a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Institute of Public Policy and Management, University of Malaya.

Support our work by making a donation. Tap to download the QR code below and scan this QR code from Gallery by using TnG e-wallet or most banking apps: