Hannah Yeoh says KL voters have ‘tasted’ BN and Perikatan rule, capital can’t go back

KUALA LUMPUR, June 22 — Federal Territories Minister Hannah Yeoh has said Kuala Lumpur voters have already “tasted” rule under Barisan Nasional and Perikatan Nasional, as she defended Pakatan Harapan’s reforms to how the capital is governed.

In an interview with Singapore’s The Straits Times, Yeoh said she was presenting a different model for Kuala Lumpur after years of what she described as poor management under previous administrations.

“In KL, I am presenting a different model to the people. They have tasted the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration in KL. It was hell,” she was quoted as saying.

“Parks gone, retention ponds gone. Perikatan Nasional (PN) — they also tasted it — just pure incompetency,” she added.

Yeoh, who is also DAP assistant secretary-general and Segambut MP, was appointed Federal Territories minister in December.

In January, Yeoh announced the formation of five committees led by MPs to monitor Kuala Lumpur City Hall’s 2026 budget spending.

The move gave KL lawmakers a formal oversight role, while large-scale projects in the capital must also take their views into account before final decisions are made.

According to The Straits Times, Yeoh also pointed to flood mitigation to contrast the current administration’s approach with that of its predecessors, saying her PN-era predecessor Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim relied on sandbags to divert floodwater instead of addressing the loss of retention ponds.

She said a 1998 Cabinet decision to protect KL’s water retention ponds was never gazetted and was later revoked in 2016 under Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s administration.

The report said field monitoring under the Anwar administration found that flood-prone hotspots in KL had since fallen from 25 to 14.

Yeoh said she remained confident that PH would retain the bulk of its support in KL despite concerns over the coalition’s performance elsewhere.

She said residents and civil society groups had told the coalition they “cannot go back” to the way the capital was run before.