Political Instability Reigns Supreme in Malaysia

Millions of Malaysians went to the polls on November 19 for the country’s 15th general election since independence. The poll generated a lot of interest as the first since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which largely shut down the economy for two years and caused thousands of deaths. Far more importantly, the election was presented as an opportunity for Malaysia to regain political stability after a long spell of weak and unstable government. 

In 2018, Malaysia underwent the first change of regime in its modern history, when the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost for the first time since independence in 1957. Since then, Malaysia has undergone two more changes in government, both “backdoor” governments in which defections resulted in the installment of new prime ministers. Thus, between this election and the last, after six decades under UMNO/BN rule, Malaysia saw three different prime ministers and three different administrations in four years.

The election was called in October by UMNO, emboldened by its strong performance in state elections in Melaka and Johor. UMNO obtained super majorities in both states and the party thought that the momentum generated would mean similar results at a general election. Ultimately, they were mistaken.

The Main Players

The November 19 election was marked by a fragmented political landscape involving five main camps. The first was the BN coalition under UMNO President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. As mentioned, BN/UMNO ruled the country continuously from independence until its shock defeat in 2018. Even then, it only lost power when the gargantuan 1MBD corruption scandal became too big for the population to swallow. 

To be sure, UMNO, the linchpin of the BN coalition, had long been synonymous with high-level corruption and Ketuanan Melayu (Malay Supremacy) ideology. But as long as Malaysia experienced decent growth, political stability, and linear progress, the bulk of the population was generally willing to look the other way on political matters.

In a nutshell, BN came to the recent election offering a “back to the future” politics, campaigning on the themes of political stability and prosperity. In UMNO’s view, BN was the only coalition with the track record to restore political stability and bring sustained economic growth. In other words, a vote for BN was a vote for the “good old days” – the era prior to 2018. 

The second major player was the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition under perennial opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. This election was widely considered the last chance for Anwar, who is 75 years old, to fulfil his long-held ambition to become prime minister. He had made at least four serious attempts in the previous three years to claim the top job but had been thwarted each time.

PH’s election narrative was straightforward and consisted of two simple elements. The first element was that PH’s mandate was stolen when Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s sudden resignation in 2020 led to the collapse of the PH government and the creation of a new ethnic Malay government via the backdoor. Voters, PH’s election campaign argued, should return the coalition to power in order restore the people’s mandate. 

Second, PH said it was the only coalition truly committed to fighting corruption and to advancing multiracial politics. This may sound silly to foreigners, but in Malaysia, neither of these goals is easy to achieve given the omnipresence of political Islam and Ketuanan Melayu ideology.

The third challenger was the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition under Muhyiddin Yassin. Muhyiddin was the one who led the internal coup that caused the downfall of the PH government in 2020. He subsequently became prime minister but was forced to resign in August 2021, when UMNO withdrew its support for his administration. 

PN shares largely the same DNA as UMNO, with the bulk of its leadership consisting of ex-UMNO leaders and Islamists. In the election campaign, PN pitched itself as a “clean” Malay party, in clear contrast to UMNO. The coalition’s Islamic component, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), has a strong grassroots presence among conservative religious voters and is generally seen as the party with the best election machinery in the rural Malay heartland.

Fourth was the Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) coalition under Abang Johari. Unlike the other main players, GPS does not operate nationally. It is the ruling coalition in Sarawak state on the island of Borneo. It stands for a state nationalist vision of “Sarawak First,” and is only really interested in winning complete autonomy for the state. Prior to the election, GPS was widely expected to win more than 22 seats, or about 12 percent of the seats in parliament, and to play the “kingmaker” if the other three players could not win a clear majority. GPS played a pivotal role in keeping the federal government with a parliamentary majority in both the 2020 and 2021 administrations.

The fifth, and probably the least significant, of the electoral players was the Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA) coalition, led by Mahathir Mohamad. Unlike in 2018, Mahathir played a rather marginal role in this year’s election. All political groupings have blamed him for Malaysia’s current political instability. If he had not resigned suddenly in 2020, there would not have been a “backdoor” government and another subsequent change of government. Mahathir did cobble together a new coalition, GTA, but nobody took it very seriously. Consisting mainly of hard-line right-wing Malay parties, 90 percent of its candidates were expected to lose prior to the election. At 97, most also thought Mahathir was too old to serve as prime minister again. 

Pre-election polls suggested that loyalties were shifting. The majority predicted that BN would end up with the largest number of MPs, but not enough to form government, for which parties require a minimum of 112 seats in the country’s 222-seat parliament. The polls also showed that the two other major coalitions, PN and PH, would end up with even fewer seats, producing a hung parliament where none of the coalitions would be able form government on their own. The polls also showed GTA attracting little to no support. 

Polls taken after a week of campaigning returned very different results. The majority now showed PH in the lead, with BN in second place and PN coming in third. But still, polls showed that none of the coalitions would be able to cross the 112-seat threshold. The most optimistic poll showed PH winning 99 seats.  

The Campaign

The two-week election campaign got off to a slow start, but things began moving in the second week. Although there was little excitement in urban areas, as compared to the 2018 campaign, it was still widely understood that urban areas were a stronghold for PH. The Democratic Action Party (DAP), the ethnic Chinese component of PH, was widely seen to have the Chinese votes in its pocket. 

In rural areas, the situation was a bit more complicated, although it was understood there were only two major players there: PN and BN (i.e. UMNO). Toward the last few days of the campaign, there was a noticeable shift of voters toward PN, but it was still unclear which of these two camps was leading. 

It was clear, however, that PAS’s election machinery was active and living up to its reputation as one of the most effective in the country. Unlike in earlier campaigns, PAS machinery was flush with money, allegedly from its PN coalition partner, Bersatu.

Although PH may have been the favorite in pre-election polls, in terms of prime ministerial preference, Muhyiddin was surprisingly in pole position, followed by Anwar, and then Zahid, the leader of UMNO. In fact, most will tell you Malay voters were turning from UMNO to PN because voters thought that Zahid forced the general election in order to avoid going to prison. Zahid is currently facing several charges of corruption and it was widely assumed that if UMNO/BN won big, most of these corruption charges would disappear.

As so often, things were most complex in the Borneo states. In Sarawak, GPS was expected to win most of the seats on offer. After all, in the December 2021 state election, GPS won more than 90 percent of the state assembly seats. In Sabah, the situation was more competitive and messy, with four credible contestants in the running. The first was the Sabah BN bloc, followed by Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) – like GPS, a local party focused on state nationalism – and then by Sabah’s PH bloc. The fourth main player was Parti Warisan. Although Parti Warisan is a state-based party, it has national ambitions and stood alone to show that it was trying to build a “Borneo bloc” with GPS in Sarawak. In other words, it wanted to dominate national politics in the same way that GPS dominated Sarawak politics. 

The other important element in the campaign was first-time voters. There were approximately 21 million voters in this election, over 6 million of which were taking part for the first time. This was a result of the recent introduction of automatic voter registration and the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18. Surveys showed that most of these new voters were undecided right until the final day of the campaign.

The Results

The final results came in at around 1 a.m. on November 20, and as many expected, none of the main coalitions were able to reach the 112-seat threshold necessary to form a new government.