When will the ombudsman be introduced?

Over the course of Anwar Ibrahim’s administration since 2022, the establishment of a Malaysian ombudsman office as a central body to manage and resolve public complaints against public service delivery has been consistently touted as a key reform promise.

This promise has been repeated by the administration in national policy documents and in official statements both at the domestic and international levels.

Yet as we approach the final parliamentary sitting of 2026 in a few months, the act remains to be seen. We, the undersigned organisations and individuals, demand to know: when will the ombudsman be introduced?

The introduction of an ombudsman has been an integral element of this administration’s institutional reform efforts. It has been mentioned as a target in the National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2024-28, the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights 2025-30, and before the UN Human Rights Council during Malaysia’s fourth cycle universal periodic review in 2024.

Yet this reform agenda has been consistently delayed over the past few years.

Most recently, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced on Facebook in December 2025 that the Ombudsman Bill was scheduled to be tabled in early 2026. He said that the ombudsman would not only be tasked with managing and resolving public complaints, but would also be granted a broader mandate over issues of governance, misconduct, whistleblower protection and freedom of information.

Subsequently in May 2026, Law and Institutional Reform Minister Azalina Othman Said reaffirmed the government’s commitment to tabling the Ombudsman Bill in the July parliamentary sitting.

Again and again, the government promises that this bill shall be introduced yet fails to do so at each session of Parliament.

The government itself clearly recognises the importance of the ombudsman, not just as an independent mechanism for the effective resolution of public complaints, but also now as an oversight body for the whistleblower protection and freedom of information frameworks.

It is telling that the Freedom of Information Bill that was recently tabled expressly mentions the role of the ombudsman as an oversight body, despite the ombudsman act itself being non-existent – a paradoxical legal situation.

Effective and equitable public service delivery is what operationalises human rights and upholds good governance. Without it, these principles are little more than words on paper.

With this in mind, complaints against public service delivery become a useful tool to identify specific gaps and inadequacies, which can then be remedied to improve service delivery in general.

The present system of public complaints management is not streamlined and often expects the very same departments and agencies which are complained against to resolve those complaints of their own volition.

This is not an ideal mechanism, which is why the ombudsman is so important: it allows for an independent external agency to investigate and resolve complaints without conflict of interest.

In developing this bill, the legal affairs division of the Prime Minister’s Department has engaged international experts and ombudsman institutions across the world. It has set up working committees consisting of government agencies, civil society actors and academia.

So we now ask the cabinet: what is the outcome of all the time, effort and resources that have been invested into this development process?

The Ombudsman Act must include the following elements in order to align with international best practice:

Once introduced, the ombudsman has the potential to spearhead the improvement of public service delivery at the federal level and to improve public trust in government. This is an opportunity that the Anwar administration must not lose sight of.

Therefore, we urge the government to:

Endorsed by: