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Iman Muttaqin Yusof

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim accused opposition lawmakers of staging “political drama” on Tuesday after they walked out of a special parliamentary session on a long-awaited royal inquiry into the country’s Muslim pilgrimage savings fund.
The confrontation came less than two weeks after Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition lost power in Negeri Sembilan. During campaigning, the prime minister had repeatedly invoked the Tabung Haji inquiry as evidence of the need to confront corruption and financial mismanagement.
Tabung Haji manages haj savings for Malaysian Muslims, making the inquiry into its governance, accounting practices and investment losses particularly sensitive in a Muslim-majority country where a pilgrimage to Mecca carries deep religious and political weight.
Anwar was absent from Tuesday’s sitting as he was recovering from an elective laparoscopic surgery for a para-umbilical hernia. The opposition had called for the inquiry to be postponed until the prime minister’s return.

“Do you want to debate me, or do you want to debate Tabung Haji? Do you want to know about me, or do you want to know about the betrayal of Tabung Haji?” Anwar asked.
“Malays and Muslims have been betrayed, yet there are still those who want to play political drama?” he added, questioning whether the opposition cared about farmers, fishermen, teachers, police officers, soldiers and pensioners who had saved with the fund to perform the haj.
Opposition chief whip Takiyuddin Hassan said lawmakers wanted to delay the sitting until Anwar was back, arguing that the prime minister had invoked parliamentary rules to call the special session but was not present to face questions.
“If we debate without the prime minister, it is as good as holding a press conference,” Takiyuddin said. The exercise had effectively been downgraded to a ministerial briefing, with no motion before lawmakers and no vote on what should happen next, he added.
Lower House Speaker Johari Abdul rejected the request, saying Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and other ministers were there to represent the government. Most opposition lawmakers then left the chamber, although MPs from Bersatu – part of the opposition Perikatan Nasional bloc – stayed behind. Putrajaya MP Radzi Jidin said the issue was too important for “political drama”.
Pilgrimage politics
Founded in 1963, Tabung Haji was created to allow Malaysian Muslims to save for the haj without borrowing or selling their property. It now has almost 10 million depositors.
A royal commission to look into the fund was approved in July 2021 under the government of then prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Its members were appointed in January 2022, after Muhyiddin’s deputy, Ismail Sabri Yaakob, succeeded him as prime minister, with former chief justice Mohamed Raus Sharif named chairman.
A 211-page report, examining problems surrounding the fund between 2014 and 2020, was submitted to the king in August 2022 but made public only on July 29 this year.
The inquiry identified weaknesses in governance and financial reporting, including sweeping ministerial powers, politically influenced board appointments and “creative accounting” to inflate profits and sustain generous payouts despite a widening asset-liability gap.


If Malaysian accounting standards had been fully applied, the fund should have recorded a loss of 1.4 billion ringgit (US$342 million) in 2017, instead of a 3.4 billion ringgit profit, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department for Religious Affairs Zulkifli Hasan told Tuesday’s session.
The report also identified 14 troubled investments making losses that ran into billions of ringgit. By late 2018, Tabung Haji’s asset-liability deficit had widened beyond 10 billion ringgit, leaving the fund technically insolvent and requiring a government-backed restructuring.
More than 75 per cent of the commission’s recommendations have since been implemented, according to the government. Zulkifli said further reforms would be incorporated into proposed amendments to the Tabung Haji Act 1995, including clearer accounting standards, penalties for financial misreporting and changes to oversight of the fund’s investments.
Question of timing
Anwar was accused of political motivation by releasing the report three days before the Negeri Sembilan election on August 1. He rejected the criticisms, telling campaign audiences that the findings were “not petty politics” but a question of safeguarding Muslim depositors.
PH nevertheless lost the state it had governed for two terms, taking 11 of 36 seats against 18 for Barisan Nasional and seven for Perikatan Nasional. Anwar’s own People’s Justice Party won just two seats, while its coalition partner, Democratic Action Party, accounted for the remaining nine.
Opposition leader Hamzah Zainudin on Tuesday questioned why the government had waited years to publish the report and what lawmakers were expected to achieve from a debate that would produce no parliamentary decision.

“We have lost confidence in the prime minister who does not explain the truth,” he said, accusing the government of failing its own standard of candour.
The walkout was “unnecessary and unwarranted”, said Ahmad Mohsein Azman, a senior analyst at consultancy BowerGroupAsia.
But the special sitting had itself become “performative”, he said, with all sides trying to outdo one another in displays of political righteousness.
“The timing of the report’s release just prior to the Negeri Sembilan state election was more politically motivated than to compel accountability for what had happened,” he added, predicting further “performative gestures” as both government and opposition sought the moral high ground.


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Opposition lawmakers had asked for the special session on the pilgrimage savings fund to be postponed until the prime minister’s return


Opposition lawmakers had asked for the special session on the pilgrimage savings fund to be postponed until the prime minister’s return.


Malaysia’s Anwar slams ‘political drama’ after opposition walks out of Tabung Haji debate

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Opposition lawmakers had asked for the special session on the pilgrimage savings fund to be postponed until the prime minister’s return

Opposition lawmakers had asked for the special session on the pilgrimage savings fund to be postponed until the prime minister’s return