'Reset' button is stuck

 

 I was sitting at the mamak with a few of my friends after a basketball session and having teh tarik that was “kurang manis” (less sweet).

But who are we kidding, right? It is never really “kurang manis”. On our phone screens was Hamzah Zainudin, the opposition leader and deputy president of Bersatu - or I should say former deputy president.

He was surrounded by a sea of supporters at a “Reset” rally, and I couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of deja vu.

I’ve been writing opinion pieces for Malaysiakini (and several other platforms before) on a weekly basis for quite a while now. In dog years, that’s about 70. In Malaysian political years, it’s closer to a century.

I’ve written about Umno splitting, PKR splintering, PAS divorcing, and Bersatu being born.

And here we are in February 2026, and the headline is “Bersatu sacks deputy president Hamzah” I had to double-check my archives to make sure I hadn't already written this back in 2024, 2018, 2008 or 2004.

Shuffle, not reset

The answer is no, I haven’t. I haven’t written about this exact particular new crisis with these exact people.

But wait a minute. It’s like watching a long-running Netflix series where the writers have clearly run out of ideas.

So they just start killing off main characters only to have them reappear three episodes later with a different haircut and a new party logo with a whole new colour palette.

The reset movement that Hamzah is spearheading is quite interesting. I like the word reset. It implies that there’s a button you can push to clear the cache and start fresh.

But in Malaysian politics, the reset button is usually more like the shuffle button on Spotify to jumble up the songs that are played. It’s the same songs, just in a different order.

Let’s look at the players. On one side, you have Muhyiddin Yassin, the man who has been in politics even longer than I have been alive. He’s purged the party, citing disciplinary problems and the aim of wanting to strengthen the party.

On the other side, you have Hamzah, the master strategist who is now suddenly an outsider in the house he helped build.

‘Inciting incident’

As a documentary filmmaker, I’m always looking for the "inciting incident." What was the spark? Was it the disastrous state election results in Sabah last year? Was it the string of by-election losses? Or is it just the natural lifecycle of a Malaysian political party?

ADS

But here’s what I really think, and it’s my personal opinion here. Our political parties aren't built on ideology. They are built on personality and patronage.

When the personality gets old, and the patronage runs dry, the party doesn't evolve. It splits into two identical, slightly smaller versions of itself, both claiming to be the “true” representative of the people.

Remember Umno a few decades ago?

While Hamzah and his supporters in white are talking about resetting the nation, one of my friends started talking about how roti telur has now increased in price.

"Zan. If they reset the party, does the price of eggs go back to 2010 prices? Because if it doesn’t, I don't care," he says.

That’s the disconnect. We have a political class that is obsessed with internal purges, disciplinary boards and whatever clauses there are in the party constitution.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are wondering why the ringgit is weak, and our weekly groceries keep getting more expensive.

Resets that don’t change anything

I’ve spent a long time documenting the voices of Malaysians. I’ve been to the rural heartlands, the urban slums, and the high-end malls.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that the reformasi fatigue has been replaced by a general fatigue for just everything.

We are tired of the drama. We are tired of the resets that don’t actually change anything.

Hamzah Zainudin (left) and Muhyiddin Yassin during better times in Bersatu

What’s different in 2026 is how this is being sold to us. Back when I started as a journalist, a political crisis meant press conferences and long-form manifestos.

Now, it’s just 15-second TikTok clips with aggressive subtitles and dramatic background music.

I saw a clip of the “Reset” rally. It was edited like a Marvel trailer. Fast cuts, dramatic audio, and a soundtrack that suggested something epic was happening.

But when you take all that away, it’s just the same guys who were in power years ago telling us that this time, they really mean it.

As someone who makes non-fiction content for a living, I find the fiction of our politics fascinating and amusing. So it’s a tough sell for me.

Political breakups

But here’s the thing: every time a party splits, we are told it’s for the “struggle”, it’s for “the race”, “the religion”, “the future”, “the people” or whatever.

But after so many decades of writing about this, I’ve started to realise that the struggle is usually just about who gets to hold control and power.

So what now? Will Hamzah’s reset work? Or will it just be another blip in the long history of Malaysian political breakups?

Axed Bersatu reps at a ‘Reset’ rally organised by Hamzah Zainudin (second from left)

I suspect it’ll be the latter. We’ll have a few weeks of rallies, some heated social media exchanges, and maybe a new party with a logo that looks suspiciously like the old one but with a different shade of the same colour.

As for me, I’ll keep sitting at the mamak with my friends after playing basketball and chatting while I gather ideas for my weekly column.

Because even if the movie seems like a new movie, someone needs to point out to the public that it is just a rehash or a remake of an older movie from a decade or two ago. - Mkini

---

ZAN AZLEE is a writer, documentary filmmaker, journalist and academic. Visit fatbidin.com to view his work.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.