What Anwar’s cabinet reshuffle really reveals about Malaysian politics

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

Before we even begin to ask who the biggest winners of Anwar Ibrahim’s latest cabinet reshuffle are, we should first be clear about what this reshuffle tells us about how he governs.

Taken as a whole, the reshuffle reveals a prime minister who rules primarily through political calculation and personal preference, rather than through any apparent coherent desire to improve governance, strengthen institutions or move the country decisively forward.

If you look at the at the cabinet reshuffle from the point of view of how this benefits the people and the country, you will only end up bewildered and confused.

However, if you see it from the angle of how it satisfies the political demands of the various parties in the “unity government” as fulfils Anwar’s own personal preference – who he likes, trusts or desires to reward – then all the pieces fall together.

With that in mind, let us turn to the biggest winners.

Biggest winner: R Ramanan

Without question, the standout beneficiary is R Ramanan.

Ramanan has been elevated from deputy minister to human resources minister, replacing the DAP’s Steven Sim, who has been shifted – one might say demoted – to the less prestigious Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives.

The obvious question is, why?

If performance were the yardstick, this decision would make little sense. Sim cannot reasonably be accused of having failed as human resources minister. In a portfolio notorious for swallowing ministers whole, Sim performed better than most.

He endured years of hostility from unions such as Nube, weathered the Human Resources Development Fund scandal without being dragged down, and exited the ministry without any catastrophic personal implosion. By Malaysian standards, that already places him above average.

So what qualifies Ramanan to replace him? What exceptional achievements did Ramanan demonstrate as deputy entrepreneur development and cooperatives minister that would make him the obvious choice to helm such a sensitive and complex ministry?

The only explanation that truly makes sense is the simplest one: Anwar likes Ramanan.

Ramanan is, by PKR standards, a political latecomer. He only joined the party in 2020 – long after PKR and Pakatan Harapan had endured years of struggle, sacrifice and political exile, and two years after PH had already formed the government in 2018.

During the PKR party elections in May 2025, Rafizi Ramli himself criticised Ramanan, saying he was still unfamiliar with PKR’s culture and history – an allusion that Ramanan’s manner of campaigning for vice-president was ill-fitted for PKR.

Yet since joining PKR, Ramanan’s ascent has been nothing short of meteoric.

In the 2022 general election, barely two years after joining the party, he was handed the Sungai Buloh seat – a high-profile and relatively safe constituency – which he won by the narrowest of margins against Umno heavyweight Khairy Jamaluddin.

By December 2023, he was appointed a deputy minister.

In May 2025, he secured a position as PKR vice-president.

And now, barely half a year later, he has been appointed human resources minister.

All this, despite the fact that most people would struggle to name a single major policy achievement or reform associated with him.

When Ramanan clashed with PKR veteran and former deputy president Rafizi during the party elections, it was Rafizi who fell – and Ramanan who soared. In a party that once claimed to stand for meritocracy and reform, that outcome tells its own story.

In Malaysia, advancement is still too often determined by selection and preference rather than competition and competence. For all their rhetoric about change, PKR and Anwar appear far less different from the old regime than their supporters would care to admit.

Winning by not losing: Fadhlina Sidek

Another major winner of the reshuffle is Fadhlina Sidek – though her victory lies not in promotion, but in survival.

Before the reshuffle, Fadhlina’s position as education minister appeared precarious. A relentless stream of incidents emerging from Malaysian schools -extreme bullying, sexual violence and even deaths – had inflicted severe damage on her public standing.

Worse, her responses often appeared overwhelmed and uncertain, reinforcing the perception of a minister out of her depth. Political pressure mounted, with the MCA among those to publicly demand her removal.

Yet Fadhlina survived.

Perhaps it helped that she led schoolchildren to sing Anwar a birthday song earlier this year. Perhaps it helped that her father, Siddiq Fadzil, a former president of the Islamic youth movement Abim, was a close friend of Anwar’s. In Malaysian politics, such connections have a habit of outweighing performance metrics.

When faced with a choice – between the educational welfare of millions of students and the political comfort of a trusted friend’s daughter – the outcome speaks volumes about Anwar’s priorities.

Other winners: Johari Ghani and Hannah Yeoh

Beyond Ramanan and Fadhlina, there are other quieter winners.

Johari Ghani emerges as one. His move from the relatively colourless Ministry of Plantation and Commodities to the far more prestigious Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry is undeniably an upgrade. It is almost certainly a position he has long coveted, and a winner, at the simplest level, is someone who gets what he desires.

Hannah Yeoh, too, can count herself among the beneficiaries. Her transfer from youth and sports to the Ministry of Federal Territories is not an outright promotion, but neither is it a demotion. And crucially, it places her in a portfolio that better suits her temperament and skills.

Her exit comes at a particularly convenient moment: amid the explosive Football Association of Malaysia foreign player naturalisation scandal – a debacle that threatens Malaysia’s international sporting reputation and exposes deep institutional rot.

Being moved out just as that storm gathers is, by any reasonable definition, a relief – and therefore, a win.

Taken together, the reshuffle does not project confidence, reform or renewal. Instead, it reinforces an uncomfortable truth: under Anwar, loyalty still appears to trump competence, preference still outweighs performance, and politics remains a game of personal calculus rather than public good.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a content creator for a news aggregator app.

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