COMMENT | Ismail Sabri should call for election after Feb 6, 2023

COMMENT | Growing up, probably no one dared to tell young Ismail Sabri Yaakob “You would be prime minister one day.” He didn’t have the natural charisma of the country’s first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, nor the pathological hunger for power of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Not even the gentle persuasion of a Muhyiddin Yassin, the prime minister before him. Ismail Sabri’s ascension to the premiership was so unlikely that he broke convention twice, by becoming the first non-party-president prime minister, and the first vice president – three ranks lower, shared with two others – to do so.