Local Councils in Malaysia: The Tier of Government You Cannot Vote For

The council that fixes your street lights, collects your bins, approves your neighbour’s extension and licenses the coffee shop downstairs is the tier of government closest to daily life. It is also the only tier whose members no Malaysian voter chooses.

Local councillors, and the Mayor or President who leads them, are appointed by the state government. That has been the position for six decades — set in motion by an emergency suspension in 1965 and later written into permanent law.

The basic facts

Item	Detail
The three grades	City Council, Municipal Council, District Council
Governing law (states)	Local Government Act 1976 [Act 171]
Who sits on a council	A Mayor or President + 8 to 24 Councillors (s. 10, Act 171)
How they get the seat	Appointed by the State Authority; term not exceeding 3 years
Constitutional basis	Local government is item 4 of the State List (Ninth Schedule)
National policy body	National Council for Local Government (Article 95A)
Federal Territories	Outside Act 171 — run by DBKL, Perbadanan Putrajaya, Perbadanan Labuan
Local elections	Suspended 1 March 1965; not currently held

Where local government sits in the structure

Malaysia has three tiers of government: federal, state, and local. Local government is not mentioned as a tier of its own in the way the first two are — instead, it appears as a subject the states legislate on.

Item 4 of the State List, in the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution, assigns to the states “Local government outside the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Labuan and Putrajaya”, expressly including “local administration; municipal corporations; local, town and rural board and other local authorities; local government services, local rates, local government elections”. Local government elections are therefore, on paper, a matter the states control.

That state autonomy is bounded by one federal mechanism. Article 95A establishes a National Council for Local Government, chaired by a federal Minister with one representative from each state (appointed by the Ruler or Yang di-Pertua Negeri) and up to ten federal representatives. Its duty is to “formulate from time to time … a national policy for the promotion, development and control of local government throughout the Federation”, and the Constitution provides that “the Federal and State Governments shall follow the policy so formulated”. This is why councils across the peninsula run on one broadly uniform model rather than eleven different ones. For the wider pattern of who legislates on what, see the federal–state division of powers.

The three grades of council

Under the Local Government Act 1976, a local authority takes one of three grades.

• District Council — the base grade, typically covering smaller towns and rural districts.
• Municipal Council (Majlis Perbandaran) — a more urbanised area meeting the criteria for municipal status.
• City Council (Majlis / Dewan Bandaraya) — a municipality that has been elevated to city status. In the Act’s own words, a City Council is “the Council of any Municipality which has been conferred the status of a City”.

Section 3 of Act 171 is the switch that creates and grades a council. It provides that the State Authority, “in consultation with the Minister and the Secretary of the Election Commission”, may by notification in the Gazette declare an area to be a local authority area, name it, define its boundaries, and “determine the status of the local authority … that of a Municipal Council or a District Council.” Section 4 lets the state change a name, change the status, or alter the boundaries later.

Whatever the grade, the internal structure is the same, and so is the way the seats are filled.

How councillors are appointed

Section 10 of Act 171 sets out the make-up of every local authority. A council “shall consist of the Mayor or President; and not less than eight and not more than twenty-four other Councillors, to be appointed by the State Authority.”

The word doing the work is appointed. Residents do not elect councillors; the State Authority — the Ruler or Yang di-Pertua Negeri, acting on the advice of the state government — names them. Section 10 goes on to require that the majority be people ordinarily resident in the area who, in the state’s opinion, have “wide experience in local government affairs” or “have achieved distinction in any profession, commerce or industry, or are otherwise capable of representing the interests of their communities.”

The other features of the office follow from the same appointed model:

• A councillor’s term of office shall not exceed three years, and a councillor is eligible for reappointment.
• A seat falls vacant on resignation, on disqualification, or “if his appointment is revoked by the State Authority” — the state that appoints can also remove.
• A Mayor or President heads the council, likewise appointed rather than elected to the post by residents.

The Federal Territories are run differently

Item 4 of the State List excludes Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan, and Act 171 does not create ordinary councils there. Each Federal Territory has its own arrangement:

• Kuala Lumpur is administered by Kuala Lumpur City Hall (Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur, DBKL) under the Federal Capital Act 1960 [Act 190], headed by a federally appointed Mayor (Datuk Bandar).
• Putrajaya is administered by Perbadanan Putrajaya.
• Labuan is administered by Perbadanan Labuan.

In each case the local-authority function is exercised by a federally appointed body, not an elected council — a parallel to, but legally separate from, the state council system.

How local elections came to be suspended

Malaysia did once elect its local councils. Under the Local Government Elections Act 1960 and earlier ordinances, cities, municipalities and many town and district boards had elected councillors, and George Town in Penang held some of the country’s earliest local elections.

The turning point was documented and specific. On 1 March 1965, during the armed confrontation (Konfrontasi) with Indonesia, local government elections were suspended by emergency regulations. The measure was framed as temporary, and sitting councillors were left in office rather than removed at once.

A Royal Commission of Enquiry, chaired by Senator Athi Nahappan, was appointed to study the working of local authorities and reported at the end of the decade; it recommended the restoration of elected local government. That recommendation was not adopted. Instead:

• The Local Government (Temporary Provisions) Act 1973 [Act 124] ended the terms of the remaining elected councillors and allowed their functions to be carried out by boards of management appointed by the state governments.
• The Local Government Act 1976 [Act 171] then put the appointed system on a permanent footing. Section 15 provides that, “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any written law, all provisions relating to local government elections shall cease to have force or effect”, and that councillors holding office when the Act came into force ceased to hold office.

Since then, no local government elections have been held in Malaysia. Whether they should be reinstated has been raised periodically by state governments, political parties and civil society; because local government elections sit on the State List, any such change engages both the states and the National Council for Local Government’s uniform national policy under Article 95A. This entry describes the legal position and its history; it does not take a view on that debate.

Common misconceptions

• “I can vote for my mayor.” Not in Malaysia’s current system. Mayors, Presidents and councillors are appointed, not elected.
• “Local councils are a branch of the federal government.” They are established and administered by the state governments under Act 171 — except in the three Federal Territories, which are run federally through separate bodies.
• “City, municipal and district councils are three different laws.” They are three grades under the same Act 171, differing mainly in the size and status of the area, not in their basic appointed structure.
• “Elections were abolished by the 1976 Act.” The 1976 Act made the position permanent, but elections had already been suspended in 1965 and the elected councils wound up in 1973; Act 171 confirmed and completed the change.

What’s next

To see how the local tier fits beneath the state and federal governments, read the federal–state division of powers and the Federal Constitution, where the State List and Article 95A live. For how the two Federal Territories run their own local administration outside this system, see Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.