Dato’ Sri Ismail Sabri bin Yaakob is a Malaysian politician who was appointed as the 9th Prime Minister of Malaysia on 21 August 2021. He served as the 13th Deputy Prime Minister from July 2021 to August 2021 as well as the Minister of Defence in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration under former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin from March 2020 to August 2021 and Member of Parliament (MP) for Bera since March 2004. He is the shortest-serving Deputy Prime Minister by serving for only 40 days. He is a member and Vice-President of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition which is aligned with the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition. He was formally appointed and sworn in as Prime Minister on 21 August 2021, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the ongoing 2020-21 Malaysian political crisis in the country. He is the first Prime Minister of Malaysia born after the independence of Malaya in 1957, and the first ever former Leader of the Opposition in Malaysia to become Prime Minister.
He served in several cabinet positions in the BN administration under former Prime Ministers Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib Razak from March 2008 to its election loss in May 2018 general election (GE14), including Minister of Rural and Regional Development, Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry, Minister of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism and Minister of Youth and Sports. He was the 15th Leader of the Opposition in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration from March 2019 to its collapse in February 2020 amid the 2020 Malaysian political crisis. In the PN government, he was appointed Senior Minister in charge of Security from March 2020 to his promotion to the deputy premiership in July 2021. He led a faction of his party UMNO that continued supporting Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin in June 2021, when the party withdrew its support over the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. After this culminated in the collapse of the government and Muhyiddin’s resignation, he successfully entered negotiations to become Prime Minister in August 2021 after garnering the support of the most MPs.