AUGUST 9 — Malaysian politics has an uncanny ability to return to where it began. Few places demonstrate this better than Baling, Kedah.
Baling is not merely another parliamentary constituency in northern Peninsular Malaysia.
It is a geographical marker of some of the most consequential episodes in Malaysian political history. It is also, quite accidentally, a useful metaphor for contemporary politics. In Malay, baling means to throw or hurl.
Malaysia has gone, figuratively speaking, from Baling to baling: from a place associated with the struggle to establish political order to a political culture in which accusations, grievances, identities and economic frustrations are constantly being thrown at one another.
The historical Baling occupies an important place in the story of Malaya’s independence.
The famous Baling Talks took place in December 1955, when Tunku Abdul Rahman, then Chief Minister of the Federation of Malaya, met Chin Peng, leader of the Communist Party of Malaya, in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate an end to the communist insurgency.
The Emergency itself had begun in 1948 and formally ended in 1960. Yet communist armed activity persisted for decades afterwards.
It was only with the Hat Yai Peace Agreement of December 1989 that the Communist Party of Malaya formally ended its armed struggle.
Thus, several generations of Malaysian leaders lived under the shadow of insurgency and national-security concerns.
Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, Tun Hussein Onn and Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad all governed, at different stages, in a political environment where communist insurgency remained part of Malaysia’s strategic consciousness.
Later prime ministers did not face an active communist insurgency in the same way. Nevertheless, even under Najib Razak, the controversy surrounding whether Chin Peng’s remains should be permitted to return to Malaysia demonstrated how the memory of the communist struggle could still ignite political passions decades after the guns had fallen silent.
Yet Baling has another meaning in Malaysia’s political history.
It was there, in the early 1970s, that the political consciousness of a young Anwar Ibrahim became nationally visible.
The Baling demonstrations of 1974 revolved around rural hardship, poverty, falling rubber prices and allegations of hunger among farmers and rubber smallholders. Anwar, then a prominent student leader, became closely associated with the campaign. His activism contributed to his detention under the Internal Security Act.
Half a century later, the student activist who protested over poverty in Baling became Malaysia’s 10th prime minister.
Therein lies the extraordinary historical circle.
The question confronting Anwar Ibrahim today is whether the political instincts formed in Baling remain sufficient for governing a Malaysia that has changed beyond recognition.
There is little doubt that Anwar’s government has repeatedly sought to protect lower-income Malaysians. Subsidies, cash assistance, social protection and measures directed towards vulnerable households remain important components of the government’s economic approach.
These policies matter.
But Malaysia in 2026 cannot be understood through a simple division between rich and poor.
The old B40, M40 and T20 classifications increasingly conceal as much as they reveal.
A household may technically sit somewhere in the middle of the income distribution yet feel considerably poorer after paying for housing, food, transport, education, childcare, healthcare and debt.
Someone statistically classified as relatively affluent may be supporting elderly parents, children studying abroad or several generations under one roof.
Meanwhile, small and medium-sized businesses face their own pressures from higher costs, competition, technological disruption and changing patterns of consumption.
This is where the political meaning of baling begins.
A considerable part of the middle class feels that everything is being thrown at it.
Taxes. Costs. Regulations. Competition. Housing prices. Education expenses. Business uncertainty.
And eventually these frustrations are baling back at Putrajaya.
Some of the criticism directed at Anwar is fair. Some is exaggerated. Some is politically manufactured.
Yet democratic politics is rarely decided by whether every complaint survives academic scrutiny. Elections are decided by how citizens feel about their circumstances.
PKR, DAP and Amanah therefore cannot simply assume that economic assistance directed towards the poorest Malaysians will automatically produce broader political confidence.
Nor should they assume that everyone who appears relatively comfortable on paper feels economically secure.
The danger becomes greater when economic anxiety intersects with identity politics.
PAS and Perikatan Nasional have demonstrated an ability to translate economic dissatisfaction into a wider narrative about Malay-Muslim political insecurity.
Barisan Nasional, meanwhile, has increasingly explored forms of electoral cooperation with PN. Initiatives such as Wawasan, associated with Hamzah Zainudin, could potentially provide political bridges between forces that were previously competitors.
The result could be the consolidation of a narrative of “Malay-Muslim unity.”
But Malaysia should be extremely careful with such terminology.
Malay-Muslim unity sounds reassuring until one asks: unity against whom?
Malaysia is not merely the Peninsula. Sabah and Sarawak are fundamental components of the federation.
Malaysian Chinese, Indians, Orang Asli and the enormous diversity of indigenous communities in Borneo are not political guests. They are Malaysians.
Any political formula constructed around the permanent mobilisation of one ethnic or religious community will eventually collide with the multiracial and federal character of the country.
Anwar therefore faces a challenge quite different from the one he confronted as a student activist.
The young Anwar could stand with one disadvantaged community and demand justice.
Prime Minister Anwar must stand with all Malaysians experiencing economic insecurity, even when conventional statistics suggest that some of them should be doing reasonably well.
That requires moving beyond the psychological categories inherited from the 1970s.
The Malaysia of Baling in 1974 was overwhelmingly concerned with rural poverty and agricultural hardship. The Malaysia of 2026 faces rural poverty too, but also urban precarity, squeezed professionals, struggling SMEs, expensive housing, graduate underemployment, technological displacement and intense international competition.
Anwar’s original political baptism in Baling taught him to hear the grievances of those at the bottom.
His challenge as PMX is to hear the grievances being baling at him from every direction.
He still has time.
Malaysia’s next general election need not be held immediately. The government therefore possesses something increasingly rare in democratic politics: a window in which policy can still precede campaigning.
August and September provide an especially appropriate moment for reflection. Merdeka Day and Malaysia Day should remind Putrajaya that Malaysia cannot be governed merely as an electoral aggregation of ethnic constituencies.
It must be governed as a federation.
The government should consequently concentrate on disposable income, SME resilience, affordable housing, productivity, wages, fair competition and a social-protection architecture that recognises vulnerability wherever it occurs rather than assuming that everyone above an arbitrary income threshold is maha kaya.
Otherwise, economic frustration will continue to become political ammunition.
And political ammunition can easily become identity politics.
Baling once represented an attempt to end an armed conflict and create the conditions for an independent Malaya.
It later became associated with Anwar Ibrahim’s emergence as a young activist demanding economic justice.
Now history has returned him to the same question from the opposite side of power.
The student activist once demanded that the government listen.
The prime minister must now prove that he can.
That is the irony of Malaysian politics.
From Baling to baling, Anwar’s political journey has come full circle. His task now is not merely to withstand everything being thrown at him. It is to understand why Malaysians are throwing it—and to respond before economic insecurity is permanently converted into ethnic and religious polarisation.
Malaysia still has time to get this right.
But time, too, should never be thrown away.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and a director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
