MP SPEAKS | Family can be both a privilege and a burden. Nazir Abdul Razak makes this abundantly clear in his memoir, ‘What’s in a name’.

As the son of a transformational prime minister (Abdul Razak Hussein) and the brother of a controversial one (Najib Abdul Razak), Nazir, as everyone knows, carved a path for himself: CIMB, under his watch, became one of Southeast Asia’s biggest banks.

Nevertheless, his father towers over the narrative. Domestically, Razak had three main legacies: the NEP, the NCC and BN.

Like most Malays of his generation, my father is a great admirer of Razak, having worked with him directly. In the early 1960s, when my father was a junior federal officer serving in Kelantan, Razak took him on a ride to Felda Kok Lanas in Jeli.

The journey was merely a pretext...