What’s wrong with KL, and how to move forward

 Power is centralised, accountability is absent and residents are shut out of decisions that shape our city.

From Boo Jia Jer

Kuala Lumpur has the GDP of a small country, the complexity of a global city, and the accountability structure of a filing cabinet in Putrajaya. That contradiction lies at the heart of DBKL’s failures, and it explains why every debate about local elections, development, or green space feels like shouting into a void.

The latest debates on reinstating local democracy in KL have pulled back the curtain on the city’s true mechanics. They revealed a sobering reality: our frustrations stem not from mere incompetence, but from a fundamental disconnect in accountability. It’s the portrait of a city being managed by everyone except the people who live in it.

The distracting racial question 

Any discussion of local elections in KL quickly collapses into racial anxiety. The familiar fear is that elections would hand control of the capital to non-Malay parties, supposedly undermining Bumiputera interests. This argument has survived for decades, largely unquestioned.

Yet the demographic reality no longer supports this narrative. KL today is not the 1960s city these fears are anchored in.

Bumiputera residents now make up about 47.7% of the population (the single largest group) with Chinese residents at 41.6%, Indians at 10%, and others forming a small remainder.

KL is not a city dominated by any single bloc, but a genuinely plural one.

More importantly, race has become a convenient proxy for what is really at stake: control over land, contracts, and development approvals.

Racial rhetoric obscures a far more material reality. Residents of all backgrounds are losing green spaces, enduring substandard infrastructure, and dealing with floods and congestion, while decisions that shape their neighbourhoods are made far beyond their reach.

The mayor who can’t say ‘no’ 

DBKL’s Datuk Bandar is often seen as the city’s chief executive. In reality, the role is closer to that of a senior administrator.

Under the Federal Capital Act (Act 267), the mayor is appointed on the advice of the prime minister, not by the people of KL. This distinction matters.

When land deals are approved, when green spaces quietly disappear, or when zoning changes appear overnight, these decisions often do not originate within City Hall. They pass through the Federal Territory land working committee — an opaque body wielding enormous influence with minimal public scrutiny.

Within this structure, the mayor’s power is conditional. Saying “no” to a federally backed project or a politically connected developer can be a career-ending gamble. The outcome is predictable: compliance, silence and plausible deniability.

Developers are the third tier of government 

If KL has a federal tier and a municipal tier, developers operate as a shadow third.

Planning by appeal has become routine. Developers propose extreme densities, like 10,000 or even 15,000 units, often without adequate roads or drainage, knowing that they can get away with it.

Federal affordable housing targets, such as Residensi Madani quotas, also force DBKL to find land quickly, regardless of long-term capacity.

The cycle is predictable: federal housing targets are set, DBKL hunts for land, developers bundle affordable units with luxury towers, and infrastructure is deferred, diluted, or forgotten.

The city pays the price later, in traffic gridlock, flooding, and social fragmentation, long after approvals have been locked in and accountability has evaporated.

Why elected councillors matter more than a superstar mayor 

YB Nik Nazmi’s proposal to begin with MP-appointed and then later, elected councillors, rather than a directly elected mayor, is politically astute.

A directly elected mayor of Kuala Lumpur would control a multibillion-ringgit budget and represent nearly two million residents. Such a figure would carry a stronger popular mandate than many federal ministers, and arguably even the prime minister.

Councillors, however, redistribute power sideways rather than upward. An elected councillor in Seputeh or Setiawangsa would have to explain, face to face, why a sidewalk vanished during road works or why a car showroom replaced a neighbourhood park.

Today’s appointed advisory boards face no such pressure. Emails can be ignored; town halls can be staged as exercises in tokenism.

This is not about ideology. It is about introducing healthy, inconvenient friction in decision making that slows bad ideas down and forces accountability when things go wrong.

Good people can’t save a bad system 

YB Hannah Yeoh’s appointment as federal territories minister is widely seen as positive for KL. She has moved quickly, pushing through reforms and initiatives within weeks of taking office. But the city’s reliance on her competence is itself telling.

It shows that KL functions today largely because of individual effort, not institutional design. This is also why it so often fails, weighed down by incompetence, weak political will and countless structural barriers to good governance.

Systems built on personalities do not endure. Ministers change. Mayors rotate. Developers and the flawed systems that enable them remain.

Without structural reform, the familiar story of overdevelopment, opaque approvals, and residents finding out too late will continue to repeat itself across the city.

Elections alone will not fix DBKL. But without democratic pressure, nothing else will.

KL does not need a perfect system overnight. It needs one simple thing first: people inside City Hall who are answerable to the people outside it. - FMT

 Boo Jia Cher is an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT..