KL representation: Hannah Yeoh gives locals a voice

PUTRAJAYA – Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur has an annual budget of RM3 billion – more than any of the 11 states on the peninsula – but none of its elected representatives has had a say in how this money is allocated.

Until now, with Hannah Yeoh, who is the first Member of Parliament from KL to be appointed Minister of Federal Territories (FT) in two decades. In January, she moved to set up five oversight committees led by local MPs to monitor how the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) spends its funds to handle longstanding flooding and traffic issues, as well as public housing, business and cleanliness.

It was one of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) assistant secretary-general’s first moves since leaving the role of youth and sports minister in December. Yeoh has set the tone for the unwinding of ministerial and mayoral discretionary powers, in a bid to ensure a more democratic process that the ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition believes will lead to a more liveable Kuala Lumpur.

“In KL, I am presenting a different model to the people. They have tasted the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration in KL. It was hell,” she said in a June 16 interview with The Straits Times at her office in the administrative capital of Putrajaya. “Parks gone, retention ponds gone. Perikatan Nasional (PN) – they also tasted it – just pure incompetency,” she added.

She was referring to the two other national coalitions. The two will vie against PH not just at a general election due by early 2028, but also at state polls in Johor and Negeri Sembilan on July 11 and Aug 1, respectively.

Voters in Malaysia’s 13 states get two bites of the cherry, electing members of the federal Parliament and state assemblymen, in hopes that they get either a national or local administration they voted for.

But those from the FT – including KL – do not get to pick their mayor or local councillors. They vote only for MPs and, since 2008, most of these federal legislators have ended up in the opposition and were unable to advocate for the policies desired by their supporters.

The FT also includes Malaysia’s administrative capital of Putrajaya, and financial hub Labuan, which is tucked between Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia. 

But the bulk of the FT minister’s responsibilities revolve around KL and its two million citizens. Located in the middle of the Klang Valley – Malaysia’s richest and most developed region and home to nearly a third of the country’s population – KL also serves as a focal point for Selangor and Putrajaya residents.

PH won 10 of the 11 parliamentary seats in KL and 16 of the 22 in Selangor. These 26 MPs make up nearly a third of the coalition’s entire contingent in the federal legislature. 

Perennial flooding in what is otherwise a modern metropolis is a key example of how the lack of transparency in running KL paves the way for decisions that damage the city.

“How did Shahidan (Kassim) fight floods? By buying sandbags (to divert water), not tackling (the loss of) retention ponds,” she said of her PN-era predecessor who served from 2021 to 2022. Shahidan is an MP from the northernmost state of Perlis some 500km away from KL.

Yeoh said the situation could have worsened had PH not taken over. Under BN – which ruled Malaysia for six uninterrupted decades until 2018 – a 1998 Cabinet decision to protect KL’s water retention ponds was never gazetted, and revoked in 2016 under the Najib Razak administration.

More than two-thirds of the land that was intended to be reserved has been handed over for development as “the loophole was 100 per cent taken advantage of”, she said. 

Thankfully, most of the lots have not yet received a development order. Yeoh vowed to impose strict requirements to protect the land’s ability to retain rainwater while the ministry rushes to gazette a protection order for the remaining land.

Since Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim came to power in 2022 as head of a PH-led multi-coalition government, the FT Ministry’s field monitoring has found that flood-prone hotspots have dropped from 25 to 14 by 2026.

Episodes such as the alienation of crucial water retention ponds have led to criticism that DBKL has been captured by vested interests, especially property developers.

PH’s own 2022 election manifesto called for Malaysians to be given “the right to elect their local governments” as city councils like DBKL being “run like private, for-profit companies” are “one of the country’s biggest issues”, leaving “the people exposed to manipulation by those who are irresponsible to siphon resources from the public coffers”.

But introducing local council elections has long been a racially charged issue in Malaysia, especially among the Malay majority in rural areas, who fear that economic centres will be controlled by ethnic Chinese. Hence, plans to introduce mayoral elections in KL are still being studied by the International Islamic University Malaysia.

In the meantime, Yeoh has tried to allow residents to have more say in how their city is run. She has held engagements not just with residents’ associations, but also with various interest groups such as running clubs requesting pedestrianised routes at night to add to Sunday car-free mornings.

The ministry now publishes information on new development and public works online so residents can put forward their concerns or objections because “we don’t want everything to be done in secrecy”. In line with this, Yeoh has also done away with special ministerial meetings on these projects where she can overrule prior decisions by the mayor.

Besides the MP-led oversight committees, each MP has a monthly meeting with DBKL executive directors, who are effectively deputy mayors, to tackle local issues.

Under the Anwar administration, KL’s MPs have also been given an additional RM200,000 annual allocation to bolster their service centres to engage with residents. This is because they do not have the assistance of state assemblymen or local councillors to handle local matters.

These initiatives have given Yeoh confidence that PH will retain the bulk of its support in KL, despite growing signs of disenchantment elsewhere.

PH had a catastrophic showing at the Sabah state polls in November 2025, where it won just one of 22 seats contested. DAP, the coalition’s largest component, was completely wiped out and saw its aura of invincibility shattered in urban constituencies, especially those that do not have Malay-Muslim majorities.

DAP responded to the debacle in Sabah by announcing in February that it was bringing forward its 2026 congress, now slated for August, so it can assess the Anwar administration’s commitment to governance reforms and whether the party should relinquish its government roles, including Cabinet positions. However, the two upcoming state votes have pushed this internal referendum to August.

Yeoh said: “KL is a bit different. We have all these announcements and reforms. When we go down (to the ground), people, civil society are telling us they cannot go back (to the way things were before).”