‘Scary’ polarisation is Malaysia’s greatest challenge, PM Anwar’s daughter Nurul Izzah warns

Squabbles over culture have flecked Prime Minister Anwar’s time in office, after a national election in 2022 that ended without a clear winner but brought the rise of a powerful Malay-nationalist minority bloc to parliament.

“Polarisation is our biggest challenge. And it is not religious. I think it is more ethnocentric than anything else,” Nurul Izzah said in an interview with This Week in Asia.

“We have to retell Malaysian stories and celebrate those different voices, but we don’t have a safe space now because everything is very scary,” she said about attempting to bridge cultural divides.

Nurul Izzah, Anwar’s eldest daughter and a founding member of his Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), said the outrage was enabled by the “green wave” – reflecting the primary colour of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) – during the 2022 election.

Many Malay voters threw their lot in with PAS, in a rejection of corruption-tainted former ruling party Umno, which for decades was the political vehicle representing the voice and interests of the country’s largest ethnic group.

It was also during the November 2022 polls that Nurul Izzah, 44, suffered her first electoral defeat, losing to a PAS candidate and ending her three straight terms as a member of parliament.

“It was a huge shock. I never lost an election in my life. I remember my mother told me; ‘ your father won the seat when you were two years old’ … that was a difficult burden to carry,” she said.

Despite her loss, it didn’t derail her father in his quest to become prime minister.

The fact that Anwar has finally secured his goal also makes Nurul Izzah anxious, as she worries about the toll that the job will take on her 77-year-old father.

“He’s extremely loving, and he showered us with a