Nurul Izzah would be better served stepping aside from her position in PKR

To hold the title of deputy leader is to act as the bridge between the party, its grassroots, and the voters.

But in the current climate, Nurul Izzah appears to have retreated from that responsibility.

She is reduced to little more than a symbolic figure, a portrait in a gallery but no longer active in shaping the party’s direction.

But, to be honest, Nurul was riding the wave of the reform movement—until PKR came to power.

Then, they started to trim the reformists out of the party, leaving it with arrivistes.

True and longstanding reformists have left the party before. Many left along the way. We criticised them, we renounced some.

Many made a major exit in 2020. We condemned them and labelled them “tebuk atap,” but there were genuine reformists among them.

They grew fed up with Anwar. That’s why they left.

Nurul has inherited—as deputy leader—a party without the “Reformasi” soul. And she holds a ceremonial role now.

What can she do in this situation? It is one where new big names are coming in, and the leader has made it clear that it is a new era—the era of Madani.

Now that Nurul Izzah is the deputy leader, she has simply dissolved into a void.

We have seen how the reform movement has lost its leadership amid a brain drain exodus from the party.

The party is losing more leaders of the reformist mold to others, and perhaps soon enough to a new formation.

As the ‘panglima’ of the party, she is unable to stop the current exodus or the excesses of a so-called reform party.

She is simply absent. And to this, I have only one thing to say: it is better for Nurul Izzah to step down from the party leadership and, in the same breath, to leave politics.

That may bring some shine back to her, as it is evident that she is incapable of opposing the party leader.

By resigning and leaving politics, she may spare herself another humiliating defeat in the next general election.

That is advice, as difficult as it is, from someone who has written extensively on the now-defunct reform movement and on her father.

She must pause for a moment to give history a chance. Give a chance to the people who have backed her since her youth.

What chance? A chance to remember her as a fiery, beloved hero of the reform movement. That alone—this call for resignation—is meant to help the masses appreciate her role in the country’s history.

If she persists in holding on to a post she is incapable of defending, she risks descending into the depths of history as a hollow, self-serving leader who cares only about herself and her father.

Not about the lives lost along the path to reform. Nor about the people who suffered, as her family did, on that same path.

And certainly not about the millions of admirers who once called her the ‘reform princess’.

If she tightens her grip on the useless and meaningless title of deputy leader—one that is constrained by the party leader—then she will face public rejection and judgment.