SEPTEMBER 7 — Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang has made a serious claim.

At the PAS muktamar, Hadi alleged that during Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to Malaysia, representatives at the US Embassy offered assistance to PAS to help bring down the Barisan Nasional (BN) government.

He further claimed that, after that meeting, the US ambassador requested a separate meeting with him and asked whom PAS would propose as prime minister.

The US Embassy has issued a statement saying that the US has never sought to decide Malaysia’s political leadership.

I cannot verify what was said in those meetings. At present, neither Hadi’s account nor Washington’s denial gives the public enough evidence to settle the matter. That is where I think the discussion should begin.

But neither should we be naïve about foreign influence. States routinely seek influence beyond their borders, and this is certainly not unique to the US.

That is hardly controversial in international relations. But influence and interference are not synonymous.

There is no universally accepted definition of foreign interference, but contemporary definitions generally distinguish it from ordinary foreign influence by looking for elements such as covert, deceptive, coercive, corrupting or non-transparent conduct.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) explicitly warns against collapsing legitimate foreign influence and foreign interference into the same category.

The US also has a long and very public history of “democracy assistance”. Scholar Thomas Carothers has spent decades documenting this field, which has included support for elections, political parties, civil society, independent media and institutional reform.

None of this is secret. However, that does not mean we should be uncritical of it too.

Scholars Thomas Carothers and Saskia Brechenmacher made an important point in their 2014 report on international democracy support.

In the report, it is stated that even assistance presented as non-partisan can have different political effects on different actors.

Money, training, international access and institutional connections can change the balance of resources inside a political system.

Foreign funding therefore deserves scrutiny. So do the interests of the governments and foundations providing it.

But having an effect is still not the same as exercising control. I am not naïve about the historical record either.

Lists are now circulating online pointing to countries where the US has been accused of, or documented as having, intervened in domestic political outcomes.

There is substantial scholarship behind the broader concern. Lindsey O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change (2018), among other works, documents an extensive history of US covert efforts to influence or change governments during the Cold War, for instance.

That history deserves to be taken seriously. But it cannot, by itself, establish what happened in Malaysia in 2014. That requires evidence specific to the Malaysian case.

Malaysia was not somehow outside this world. Malaysian organisations have received foreign support.

This is where the literature on transnational advocacy is useful. Scholars Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink argued years ago that domestic actors often reach outward when political channels at home are blocked, forming networks with international organisations, foreign governments and activists elsewhere.

Their well-known “boomerang” model was important precisely because it restored agency to local actors.

Malaysians engaging international organisations are not necessarily passive instruments of foreigners. They may be using international relationships to pursue political objectives of their own.

The reverse is equally possible. Foreign governments can use those relationships to advance their interests. Both things can be true at once.

So yes, foreign money exists, so does foreign influence. Foreign governments have interests. Pretending otherwise would be rather innocent.

But there is an equally serious mistake in moving from foreign funding to foreign control, as though the two mean the same thing.

We should not also dismiss the historical context. When Obama visited Malaysia in 2014, Washington was simultaneously deepening relations with Najib Razak’s government.

The two governments elevated bilateral co-operation, discussed trade and security, and publicly described the relationship in positive terms.

Obama also raised the issue of civil liberties and met Malaysian civil society representatives. Foreign policy frequently involves working closely with governments while maintaining relationships with people who criticise those governments.

Nor should Najib’s eventual defeat in 2018 be treated, in itself, as evidence of an American operation. The story is not that simple.

There is already substantial literature explaining GE14 through Malaysian political dynamics such as elite rupture within Umno, Mahathir Mohamad’s return, the construction of a more credible opposition coalition, 1MDB and other governance concerns, changing patterns of political mobilisation and, ultimately, voter choice.

If we are genuinely concerned about foreign interference, then we should establish transparent rules and require disclosure.

As of 2026, Malaysia still does not have a specific law regulating political funding, while the proposed Political Funding Bill remains under study, with questions such as contribution limits and the appropriate regulatory body still unresolved.

Malaysia is neither immune from foreign influence nor simply a political arena shaped from outside.

Foreign powers have interests here. Of course they do. But the language of “foreign agents”, outside interference and foreign-funded attempts to destabilise governments is hardly new in Malaysian politics.

It has surfaced repeatedly in debates around opposition politics and civil society, now and then.

That history is precisely why we need to be careful. Foreign actors can take advantage of divisions, relationships, institutional weaknesses and political opportunities that already exist.

But the harder question is what was happening within Malaysia itself that made such influence possible, useful or politically consequential in the first place.

The foreign hand is worth scrutinising. It just should not become an excuse for pretending the local hands are clean.

* Khoo Ying Hooi, PhD is an associate professor at Universiti Malaya. 

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.