Mohamad Sabu

Biography

Mohamad bin Sabu (born 14 October 1954 in Tasek Gelugor, Penang), universally known as Mat Sabu, is Minister of Agriculture and Food Security in the unity government led by Anwar Ibrahim, in office since November 2022. He is the founding president of the National Trust Party (AMANAH) and has been the Member of Parliament for Kota Raja since 2018. Mat Sabu attended Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bukit Mertajam and began a diploma in food technology at the MARA Institute of Technology, but was dismissed over student political activity in the mid-1970s. He joined the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) in 1975 and PAS in 1981, and became one of the opposition's best-known platform speakers — a reputation built over decades of ceramah. He was detained twice under the since-repealed Internal Security Act, including during Operation Lalang in 1987. He has sat for four different constituencies across three states: Nilam Puri from 1990, Kubang Kerian from 1995, Kuala Kedah from 1999, and Kota Raja since 2018. Within PAS he was a vice-president and then, from 2011, deputy president — the first non-cleric elected to the party's top leadership in more than twenty-five years — after standing on an explicitly moderate platform. In 2015 he and other progressive PAS figures were voted out of the party leadership. They left to form what became AMANAH, with Mat Sabu as its first president, taking the moderate Islamist wing into the opposition alliance that won in 2018. He was Minister of Defence from May 2018 until the Pakatan Harapan government fell in February 2020, and has since taken responsibility for agriculture and food security, a portfolio dominated by rice supply, import dependence and farm subsidies.

Constituencies (1)

Electoral track record

367 mentions across 11 months

News mentions