COMMENT | Malaysia’s contemporary political economy is no longer shaped solely by growth forecasts, fiscal arithmetic, or coalition manoeuvring.

Increasingly, it is defined by how the state manages accountability when power, money, and institutions converge.

A cluster of high-profile governance cases, spanning defence procurement, former prime ministers, and influential figures in Islamic finance, has placed the rule of law under sustained public, market, and institutional scrutiny.

The central national question has shifted from whether accountability exists in theory to whether it is applied consistently, predictably, and without political distortion when elite interests and sensitive sectors are involved.

At the centre of this...