Snap polls for Malaysia in 2026 unlikely as PM Anwar bets on riding out ‘corporate mafia’ storm

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is set to ride out the “corporate mafia” storm rather than call snap polls in 2026, betting that public anger will fade and voters are forced to reckon with little alternative to his Pakatan Harapan (PH) pact.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has been accused of “corporate mafia”, using its wide-ranging powers, including unilaterally freezing bank accounts, to enable corporate manipulation and takeovers.

The assessment by sources close to Datuk Seri Anwar comes amid a mutiny against former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, which has seen most of the MPs from his opposition Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia follow sacked deputy president Hamzah Zainudin out the door.

That implosion has left the Islamist Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) as the dominant opposition party – a prospect that Mr Anwar’s inner circle believes will sober up even the most disgruntled PH supporters because of doubts over PAS’ technocratic competence and theocratic ideals.

“Anwar believes public anger over the ‘corporate mafia’ issue will dissipate with time as voters sober up to the reality that the alternative is a PAS-led government, as Bersatu would have crumbled by then,” a senior PH official told The Straits Times.

But that calculation is risky – fresh allegations against the MACC have continued to emerge, raising the prospect that the scandal could grow with time.

Human Resources Minister Ramanan Ramakrishnan on March 25 moved to deny that he was the alleged lawmaker who had collected RM9.5 million (S$3 million) from market player Victor Chin, who was among 10 people detained between October and January for alleged involvement in money laundering. Mr Chin has since been released on bail.

The payment was allegedly meant to resolve Mr Chin’s legal troubles with Malaysia’s police force and the embattled anti-graft agency that is now at the centre of accusations of widespread abuses.

Mr Ramanan, a Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) vice-president, said at a press conference: “This is a dirty narrative to tarnish PKR, its MPs and the government.” He also questioned whether Mr Chin and the party’s rebel former deputy president Rafizi Ramli were trying to bring down the Anwar administration.

Mr Ramanan is the latest figure closely linked to Mr Anwar to be embroiled in the “corporate mafia” allegations.

Accusations of misconduct against the MACC have built up over years, especially against its chief, Tan Sri Azam Baki. Despite this, he has been handed three 12-month renewals since Mr Anwar came to power in 2022.

But Bloomberg’s in-depth report in February detailing these claimed abuses have sparked national outcry and calls for a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) – Malaysia’s highest level of public investigation into a matter of national interest – even from within Mr Anwar’s PH coalition.

The NexG affair

Mr Chin has welcomed investigations, and also the calls for an RCI. But his revelations concerning a boardroom tussle that began in 2025 involving two businessmen close to Mr Anwar have dragged PKR into deeper controversy.

The firm in the middle of the battle, NexG, holds lucrative government contracts worth over RM2.5 billion to supply identification documents, including passports, foreign worker IDs and driving licences.

In late 2025, NexG saw the appointment of seven directors who market sources say are aligned to Mr Anwar’s former political secretary, Datuk Seri Farhash Wafa Salvador. Since Mr Anwar took power after the 2022 election, Mr Farhash has enjoyed a meteoric rise in corporate Malaysia, holding various directorships, as well as having millions of shares pass through his hands.

NexG founder and then executive chairman Hanifah Noordin claimed that these new directors were attempting to force him out. He also alleged that they planned to subcontract and transfer the company’s intellectual property to HeiTech Padu – a company in which Mr Farhash was a substantial shareholder in 2024.

In March, Raya Aviation, a firm controlled by Datuk Ishak Ismail, a close associate of Mr Anwar since the 1990s, emerged as NexG’s largest shareholder with a 20 per cent stake.

Mr Ishak has since been able to replace the directors who joined in 2025 and is now the firm’s executive chairman, with Datuk Hanifah as his deputy.

Mr Rafizi, a former economy minister, has become a stern critic of the government’s response to the “corporate mafia” saga. He warned that the intrigue surrounding NexG is a “national security matter” as it involves passports and even identity cards, which he pointed out accords the holder with the right to vote in elections.

“Whoever controls NexG can determine all forms of identification for all official business, from banking, to voting, government matters, and even citizenship,” Mr Rafizi said in a March 27 podcast.

The election calculus

The stakes make the question of timing all the more fraught. A general election is due only by early 2028, but speculation has been growing that a national vote could be held simultaneously with the Melaka or Johor state polls, or both.

Melaka’s legislature must dissolve by end-2027, while official sources from Johor told ST that the state’s Menteri Besar, Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi, has intimated to allies that they should be ready to face the ballot by August or September 2026.

But if the general election is delayed after the state elections, this raises the odds of the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional (BN) breaking off an electoral pact with Mr Anwar’s PH. The pact has been in place since they formed the government together after Malaysia’s first-ever hung Parliament in 2022.

BN, led by Deputy Prime Minister Zahid Hamidi, believes it can retain its two-thirds supermajorities in Melaka and Johor without PH’s help.

Such a result would spur the once-dominant UMNO to end its alliance with Mr Anwar once Parliament is dissolved. It would then try to reclaim the prime ministership that it had held for more than six of the seven decades since independence.