Political parties across Malaysia must abandon strategies rooted in exploiting racial and religious sensitivities if the nation is to progress, according to Datuk Mustapha Sakmud, the Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Sabah and Sarawak) and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) Sabah state leadership council chairman. Instead, he argues, parties should compete by demonstrating superior policies, administrative performance, and tangible improvements in citizens' quality of life. His remarks, made in early August and emphasised at PKR's 2026 National Congress, reflect a growing recognition among Malaysian political figures that the electorate's expectations have fundamentally shifted.
The veteran politician contends that political campaigns which pit one ethnic community against another or weaponise religious identity serve no constructive purpose beyond fracturing social cohesion. Such approaches, he suggests, create artificial divisions among communities who could otherwise cooperate toward shared development goals. This perspective aligns with broader shifts in voter behaviour observed across Southeast Asia, where younger and increasingly urban populations tend to prioritise practical governance outcomes over traditional communal allegiances. Mustapha's intervention carries weight given his position bridging both federal and state-level governance, suggesting the argument carries official sanction within PKR's strategic thinking.
In Sabah specifically, Mustapha emphasises that the state's defining characteristic is its remarkable ethno-religious plurality. Rather than viewing this diversity as a liability to be managed through zero-sum identity politics, he frames it as a strategic asset. The genuine political question facing Sabahans, he contends, centres not on ancestry or faith but on which party and leader possesses the capability to deliver concrete solutions to everyday problems. Healthcare access, educational quality, economic opportunity, infrastructure adequacy—these material concerns occupy far more of citizens' attention than abstract appeals to communal loyalty. Mustapha suggests that Sabah voters have developed sufficient political maturity to resist manipulation through divisive narratives, implicitly criticising competitors who continue deploying such tactics.
The shift toward performance-based governance that Mustapha advocates requires abandoning the conventional "one-size-fits-all" approach to federal policy and embracing what PKR Sabah terms a "Needs-Based Economy" framework. Under this model, government resources and assistance programmes would be allocated according to objective measures of necessity rather than predetermined ethnic or demographic categories. This represents a potentially significant departure from historical patterns in Malaysian governance, where communal representation and allocation mechanisms have long been embedded within constitutional and political structures. The practical implications for Sabah are substantial, affecting everything from fuel subsidy mechanisms to healthcare provision and rural electrification programmes.
Fuel subsidies in Borneo provide a concrete example. Sabah and Sarawak, as resource-rich but geographically dispersed territories with significant transportation challenges, face diesel and petrol quota arrangements designed decades ago without reference to current consumption patterns or development realities. Mustapha's argument that these quotas should be restructured to reflect contemporary need rather than historical allocation suggests PKR is willing to challenge entrenched bureaucratic arrangements if doing so better serves constituent welfare. This pragmatic reallocation approach could potentially improve economic competitiveness in Sabah by reducing business operating costs and improving rural service provision.
Education, healthcare, water supply, electricity, road infrastructure, and broadband connectivity represent the portfolio of essential services that Mustapha identifies as requiring needs-based rather than identity-based allocation mechanisms. Each sector exhibits significant geographical disparities within Sabah, with interior and island communities systematically disadvantaged relative to urban centres. A genuine needs-based system would prioritise investment in areas experiencing the greatest deficits, potentially benefiting Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera communities alike. However, implementing such an approach would require substantial political courage, as it necessarily threatens vested interests embedded within existing distributive frameworks.
Mustapha points to the MADANI Government's decision to increase the Sabah Special Grant from RM600 million to RM1.5 billion as evidence that performance-driven policy adjustment remains possible at the federal level. This 150 per cent increase, while significant, still represents only partial redress for historical underfunding of Sabah's development infrastructure. The grant's deployment according to needs-based criteria could substantially improve service delivery, though implementation requires transparent monitoring to prevent political manipulation. The increased allocation itself demonstrates that federal resource rebalancing toward underperforming regions remains within political feasibility.
Understanding Mustapha's position requires situating it within the broader MA63 (Malaysia Agreement 1963) debate that has intensified in recent years. Sabah and Sarawak negotiated constitutionally guaranteed entitlements to 40 per cent of net federal revenue derived from their territories—a provision long treated as honoured more in principle than practice. Mustapha insists this constitutional obligation must remain central to federal-state relations regardless of performance-based policy frameworks. The tension between needs-based allocation and constitutional rights provisions represents a genuine governance challenge requiring careful navigation. Framing revenue-sharing in rights-based rather than discretionary terms potentially provides a less politically contentious pathway than perpetual negotiations over development grants.
The argument for deprioritising identity politics reflects broader regional trends. Thailand, Indonesia, and Philippines have all experienced phases where demographic or ethnoreligious narratives dominated electoral competition, typically with destabilising consequences. Malaysia's relative stability partly stems from institutional mechanisms constraining such polarisation, yet those mechanisms also calcify distributive patterns that no longer reflect contemporary economic realities or demographic needs. Mustapha's call for reorientation aligns with international evidence suggesting that governance legitimacy increasingly depends on measurable service delivery rather than symbolic representation.
Implementing performance-based competition among political parties requires establishing transparent metrics for assessing administrative effectiveness. This institutional prerequisite represents a significant challenge, as Malaysian governance traditionally emphasises opaque decision-making processes that accommodate various stakeholder interests through discretionary allocation. Public commitment to metrics-based evaluation would necessitate exposing government effectiveness to regular external scrutiny. Political parties accustomed to distributing patronage through non-transparent mechanisms might resist such transparency, even while rhetorically endorsing performance-based governance.
For Malaysian voters evaluating these arguments, several tensions merit consideration. Performance-based governance remains desirable, yet constitutional entitlements and community representation systems address genuine historical grievances and minority security concerns. Needs-based allocation appears logical yet obscures difficult distributional choices about which needs receive priority. Mustapha's framework assumes transparent implementation, yet Malaysian governance institutions lack robust accountability mechanisms. Whether the political will exists to substantially restructure distributive systems remains uncertain. Nonetheless, his public articulation of this position, made by a federal minister responsible for two Malaysian states, signals that at least portions of the political establishment recognise the necessity of governance modernisation beyond identity-based competition.
