A candid conversation at a Persian restaurant in Manila between a journalist and a former Philippine Cabinet secretary who served under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo during her 2001-2010 tenure has sparked uncomfortable reflection about Malaysia's political trajectory. The official, well-versed in Malaysian politics through years of professional and personal engagement with our ministers and prime ministers, delivered an unsettling assessment: Malaysia's political culture is beginning to resemble that of the Philippines. Coming from someone intimately familiar with how deeply institutionalised political plunder has become in the Philippine system, this observation carries particular weight and warrants serious examination.
The catalyst for this comparison emerged on August 27, when three former prime ministers converged at the Kuala Lumpur court complex on the same day. Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, and Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob were simultaneously engaged in separate trials and asset declaration proceedings. This marked a historic and deeply unsettling milestone for Malaysia—a moment that visibly demonstrated how far Malaysian politics has drifted from its previous reputation for relative stability and restraint. The image of three former heads of government standing in court on identical charges represents a watershed moment in our nation's democratic journey.
While Malaysia has witnessed an escalation in high-level political prosecutions following Barisan Nasional's collapse after the 14th General Election in 2018, such a phenomenon remains relatively novel in our political landscape. The Philippines, by contrast, has cultivated this as a normalised feature of its political culture. The contrast between the two countries becomes starker when examined against historical context. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was forcibly removed from power in February 1986 after widespread popular uprising against decades of systematic state theft, egregious human rights violations, and electoral fraud. This dramatic upheaval represented a moment of potential reckoning, yet the culture of political plundering never truly dissipated.
Institutional frameworks in the Philippines codify this reality. Philippine law recognises "non-bailable plunder"—a crime defined as systematic looting of state resources by public officials who accumulate at least 50 million pesos, approximately RM3.2 million. This legal classification itself signals how routine and endemic such behaviour has become. Current events exemplify how this culture persists unabated. Earlier this year, the Philippine House of Representatives impeached sitting Vice-President Sara Duterte on corruption charges and abuse of public trust related to unaccounted funds. Her case proceeded to the Senate for trial, where conviction requires 16 votes from 24 senators. However, she maintains a blocking minority of eight senators, making her removal mathematically impossible.
The composition of the Philippine Senate itself reveals the depth of the problem. Among the 24 senators—who hold the third most powerful political position after the president and vice-president—numerous individuals face active corruption charges or investigations. Senator Jinggoy Estrada, previously incarcerated at a Philippine National Police facility over a multi-billion-peso pork barrel scandal, has been arrested again on fresh non-bailable plunder charges involving infrastructure kickbacks. Senator Loren Legarda conveniently departed to Paris on medical and personal leave precisely as preliminary investigations by the Ombudsman commenced against her and her son, Congressman Leandro Leviste, concerning a controversial multi-billion-peso solar power franchise. Other sitting senators including Emmanuel Joel Jose Villanueva, Francis Joseph Escudero, Mark Aguilar Villar, Camille Aguilar Villar, and Christopher Lawrence Go face intense scrutiny over flood-control irregularities and related infractions.
The monetary sums involved in Malaysian cases are substantial—reaching into millions and billions of ringgit. Yet observation suggests that top-tier Filipino politicians, and even mid-ranking ones, accumulate and display wealth at scales that dwarf their Malaysian counterparts. Three decades as a journalist moving between the two nations provides perspective. Philippine provincial warlords govern their fiefdoms through guns, goons, and gold, while political elites exhibit almost incomprehensible affluence through sprawling compounds, fleet-sized security details, and dynastically ostentatious displays of opulence. In Manila's luxury hotels, arrivals and departures of the ultra-wealthy showcase bulletproof American SUVs, armoured Land Cruisers, and European sedans surrounded by battalions of bodyguards—a visible manifestation of concentrated wealth rarely matched in Kuala Lumpur's establishments.
This wealth concentration reflects deeper structural realities. In a nation of 117.7 million people distributed across 82 provinces, municipal and city power concentrates within roughly 180 to 250 dominant political warlords and clans—locally termed "angkan" or political dynasties. Presidential succession has become a family enterprise. Ferdinand Marcos's son, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr, currently holds the presidency; Diosdado Macapagal's daughter Gloria served as president; Corazon Aquino's son Benigno "Noynoy" led the nation; and Rodrigo Duterte's daughter Sara serves as vice-president. These dynasties perpetuate themselves across generations, consolidating power and resources within narrowing circles.
Malaysia, despite witnessing sons of prime ministers ascend to the premiership, maintains comparatively greater meritocratic openness. Individuals raised in modest circumstances by single mothers have achieved ministerial rank. The Philippines occasionally produces exceptions—boxer Manny Pacquiao rose from extreme destitution, and Joseph Estrada leveraged a cinematic pro-poor persona to reach the presidency. Yet these remain anomalies rather than systemic patterns. The underlying social structures diverge markedly. Manila's Light Rail Transit and Metro Rail Transit systems suffer from antiquated infrastructure, severe overcrowding, and extended waiting periods, appearing primitive beside Kuala Lumpur's modern rail networks, which alongside Bangkok's and Singapore's systems, serve a visible cross-section of middle and working classes.
This transportation disparity reflects broader demographic realities. The Philippines exhibits acute social stratification: a minuscule apex of hyper-wealthy oligarchs sitting atop a drastically thin middle class compared with Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, above a vast base struggling at subsistence levels. Thai and Malaysian middle classes provide buffer zones of relative stability and demand for competent governance. The Philippines' extreme inequality produces a political system where plundering operates as a perfected art form, largely insulated from accountability through structural weakness and oligarchic control. Malaysian politics historically occupied different terrain, defined less by systematic grand-scale theft and more by patronage networks, factional competition, and institutional restraint.
The troubling reality facing Malaysia emerges clearly. With three former prime ministers simultaneously occupying courtroom positions in Kuala Lumpur, our nation can no longer maintain claims to fundamental difference from the Philippine experience. We are ceasing to be a cautionary observer of our neighbour's political pathology and gradually, measurably, becoming subject to it. The specific mechanics differ—our inequality remains less extreme, our middle class more robust, our institutions somewhat more resistant. Yet the underlying trajectory points unmistakably toward convergence. Malaysian politics have begun exhibiting the same vulnerabilities to elite capture, systematic looting, and institutional rot that characterise Philippine governance. The question now is whether Malaysian society possesses sufficient civic cohesion and institutional resilience to arrest this drift, or whether we will fully complete the transformation into a society where three ex-leaders facing simultaneous trials becomes merely another routine feature of our political landscape.
