My father moved to Kuala Lumpur in the 1960s. He was a young civil servant. Before that, he had only left Kelantan to further his studies in Singapore. Three of my four siblings were born in Kelantan.

My father’s life plan at that juncture was to serve the nation and then move back to Kota Bharu, where he thought his savings and pension would go further as the cost of living in Kelantan was lower. His parents were there, as was some land my mother and he had inherited. Kelantan had the added obvious advantage of having the best food in the world.

He retired in 1988 but ended up staying on in Petaling Jaya. All his children married what Kelantanese would call “outsiders”, that is, non-Kelantanese. My father reckoned that if he returned to Kelantan, he would rarely see his children and grandchildren. And anyway, Kelantanese food was by then readily available in the Klang Valley.

This shift experienced by my father is arguably typical for many Malaysians, including the Malays who had migrated from their kampung, particularly from the 1980s onwards.

Those days, Hari Raya in the city would be quiet, as most would balik kampung to their parents or grandparents. I remember envying my relatives and friends who celebrated exciting Hari Raya in the kampung while we were left with little to do in KL.

Today, Hari Raya in KL is a lively experience. As my parents’ generation grows older, the kampung of young Malays are more often than not Kampung Tunku or Kampung Baru.

Politicians in Malaysia of all races enjoy playing the race card, for the simple reason that ethnic insecurities provide an easily understood narrative for voters. This was straight from the playbook of our colonial masters to ensure that we would not work together to get them out of our country.

Fast-forward to today and preying on the anxieties of KL Malays is still addictive politics. But this obscures a more complex picture.

While Malays have been in KL from its inception with the roles played by Raja Abdullah as well as Mandailing trader Sutan Puasa, the Malay population in the city grew significantly after Merdeka as civil servants like my father came to work for the country’s nascent government. After the May 13, 1969 racial riots, the New Economic Policy’s (NEP) implementation also resulted in many Malays coming to the city to study and work, a process that accelerated as Malaysia began to industrialise.

There were not enough houses to cater to this burgeoning number of new city residents. The government tolerated the squatter villages that grew across the city. Traditional Malay enclaves such as Kampung Baru, Sungai Penchala and Segambut also developed.

By the 1990s, however, as KL began to be dominated by mega skyscrapers, the government reorganised many squatter settlements into low-cost housing estates. A lot of wealth was generated from foreign investments and a lively stock market. At the same time, neighbourhoods such as Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Bukit Damansara and Setiawangsa rose up — where a sizeable Malay elite and middle class built roots in KL.

Satellite towns and housing estates were also built outside KL to cater to commuters seeking homes in the suburbs. The city centre started to hollow out. Today, while residents in the capital city number almost two million, it is estimated another one million commute from the Klang Valley and beyond to work and study in the capital during the day.

This, of course, has created enormous challenges and the political and administrative status quo for the capital is no longer viable.

The vacuum of democratic accountability, since KL residents only get to vote for their MPs and there are no “state assemblies” for any of the three Federal Territories, means the governance of the capital city is far removed from its people. In turn, developers were pretty much unchecked in their influence to churn out massive projects in the city with little regard for liveability.

Meanwhile, there is a need for new solutions for the housing situation while stopping the hollowing out of KL. The gap between daytime and night-time residents can be reduced, thereby freeing up our highways and roads, while public transport usage can be increased. Developments in the city centre should not be about creating more condominiums to be turned into Airbnbs but rather housing for the city residents — for the people who actually need to work and live there.

Moreover, in 2018, a Unicef study on children in low-cost flats in KL (where residents are predominantly Malay, with significant Indian and Chinese populations) revealed that the group remains well behind its peers in the rest of KL in terms of being underweight (15%, almost double the KL average); stunted (22%, double the KL average); and obese (23%, almost six times the KL average). Only 50% of five- to six-year-olds in low-cost flats attend pre-school, compared to almost universal national enrolment.

The grassroots commerce situation is also unfortunately tangled. For many ordinary Malays, selling wares through roadside stalls is still the norm as shophouses and shopping malls remain out of reach. However, there have been widespread instances of licences being procured by corrupt cartels who then resell them to ordinary traders at an enormous premium.

Then there are issues related to Kampung Baru, the traditional Malay enclave at the heart of KL. It was established over a century ago as a gift by Sultan Alaeddin Suleiman Shah of Selangor to allow the Malays to live in the bustling town and preserve their customs.

It was gazetted as a Malay Agricultural Settlement prior to Merdeka. Kampung Baru played a major role in the resistance to the Malayan Union and was one of the sites of the racial riots in 1969 and a significant part of the Reformasi street protests in 1998. Nevertheless, this iconic, strategic and valuable site is beset by land ownership issues, coupled with challenges under existing legislation that prevent the local community from deriving full value from the area.

Surely the time has come for KL Malays (bumiputeras make up 47.7% of the capital’s residents) and their fellow city residents to have a say in the running of their city. The rhetoric we see about Malays being marginalised when some form of election is run in KL is being fed on outdated colonial ethnic tropes but this simply does not reflect reality.

In October 2025, I commissioned a randomised and stratified survey by Invoke involving 634 adult voters (read the survey report titled KL Voter Sentiment). It found that 62% of KL voters support some form of election for DBKL, with more than 70% of Chinese and Indians supporting the proposal. Significantly, 51% of the Malays are supportive.

For all the alleged unhappiness about the appointment of Hannah Yeoh (a DAP MP) as Minister of the Federal Territories notwithstanding, parties like Umno, PAS and PPBM should rally behind the idea of a more democratic DBKL, where KL residents (remember that the Malays will soon form the majority there) determine who will be mayor.

There are ways — including those recently proposed by Professor Shad Saleem Faruqi — to design an election system that is proportionate and representative of KL’s demographics. This will help avoid a winner-take-all scenario.

Even assuming Pakatan Harapan (PH) continues to be dominant in parliamentary seats in the city, other parties and groups would still have a better chance at representation at the local government level. Separately, gender quotas can be considered to ensure no one is left behind.

The democratic deficit in KL has created many problems, which the top-down approach under the present structure falls short of addressing. Again: the status quo of residents paying rates and taxes but having little say in how it is run, while politicians play up racial divisions and rhetoric from six decades ago to stop reform, is simply unsustainable.

The people of KL deserve so much more.

Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad has been the MP of the KL constituency of Setiawangsa for two terms and is the host of the current affairs and sustainability podcast Lebih Masa. He was a cabinet minister (2022-2025) and is the author of Saving the Planet: Climate and Environmental Lessons from Malaysia and Beyond, Malaysian Son: A progressive’s political journey in the heart of Southeast Asia and Moving Forward: Malays for the 21st Century. He is part of the growing number of KL-born Niks who are discovering better Kelantanese cuisine in the city.