The Rise, Resilience and Demise of Malaysia’s Dominant Coalition

ABSTRACT

In May 2018, Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional (BN) lost power for the first time since the country’s independence. Although the opposition finally succeeded in assuming the reins of government after three failed attempts since 1990, the aspired for ‘two-coalition system’ did not emerge. Like previous opposition coalitions that disintegrated after electoral defeat, BN is fast melting down and is now reduced to a rump of its Malay nationalist core, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). Officially born in 1974, BN was expanded from its centrist forerunner Alliance, which suffered an electoral setback in 1969 under centrifugal competition. As a permanent grand coalition designed to contain opposition, BN had resiliently survived on a crafty manipulation of communal anxieties of ethnic Malays and Chinese. As unintended consequences, BN had, however, radicalised opposition in first-past-the-post elections and become vulnerable to implosion after electoral landslides. Pakatan Harapan now seemingly emerges as the new dominant coalition, with centrifugal competition from ethno-religious and regional-nationalists.

KEYWORDS:

• Malaysia
• Elections
• First-Past-The-Post
• One-party Predominance
• Permanent Coalition
• Consociationalism

Notes

1. Malaysia was formed in 1963 by four former British colonies: Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak, but Singapore left the federation two years later. Malaya had won her independence earlier in 1957 and her political system was adopted by the expanded federation. For simplicity, ‘Malaysia’ will be used to cover Malaya in 1957–1963.

2. The summary provided by the Department of Statistics Malaysia obstructs a more nuanced understanding of Malaysian society and politics lumps together Malays in the Peninsula and Muslim natives and non-Muslim natives in Borneo who do not have homogenous experiences and political outlooks. The data can be found at https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/cthemeByCat&cat=155&bul_id=c1pqTnFjb29HSnNYNUpiTmNWZHArdz09&menu_id=L0pheU43NWJwRWVSZklWdzQ4TlhUUT09, accessed 28 August 2018.

3. PH won 121 constituencies under various tickets of PKR, DAP (Sabah and Sarawak) and Warisan (Sabah). So, PKR has accepted three independent parliamentarians, two from Sarawak and one from the Batu constituency in Kuala Lumpur, while Bersatu and Warisan took in one ex-UMNO parliamentarian each.

4. PKR was originally known as the National Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Nasional) before its merger with the leftist Malaysian People’s Party (Parti Rakyat Malaysia, PRM) in 2003.

5. Its four Sabah parties, Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation (UPKO), Parti Bersatu Rakyat Sabah (PBRS) and Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) quit on 10–12 May while its four Sarawak parties, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) and Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) quit to form Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) on 12 June. Two Peninsula-based parties, People’s Progressive Party (myPPP), as per the claim of its president M. Kayveas, and Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (Gerakan) left, respectively, on 19 May and 23 June. However, PBRS and myPPP have since returned to BN’s fold based on an announcement in October. See A.R. Zurairi (2018) ‘Nazri new BN sec-gen to head coalition rebranding, restructuring’, Malay Mail Online, 27 October, https://www.malaymail.com/s/1687304/nazri-new-bn-sec-gen-to-head-coalition-rebranding-restructuring, accessed 30 October 2018.

6. Donald Horowitz (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 440.

7. Giovanni Sartori (1976) Parties and Party Systems – A Framework for Analysis. Reprint, Colchester, UK: ECPR Press, 2005.

8. Horowitz (1985, p. 326).

9. David Robertson (1976) A Theory of Party Competition. London: John Wiley and Sons, p. 42.

10. Effective number, N = 1 / where Pi is the proportion of each party’s votes or seats. See Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera (1979) ‘Effective number of parties: a measure with application to West Europe’, Comparative Political Studies, 12(1), pp. 3–27.

11. Maurice Duverger (1954) Political Parties: Their Organisation and Activity in the Modern State (translated by B. North and R. North). London: Methuen, pp. 217–239.

12. Gary Cox (1997) Making Votes count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 29, 31–32, 76–79, 96–97, 140–142 and 193.

13. T.J. Pempel (Ed.) (1990) Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

14. Patrick Dunleavy (2010) ‘Rethinking dominant party systems’, in M. Bogaards and F. Boucek (Eds), Dominant Political Parties and Democracy: Concepts, Measures, Cases and Comparisons. Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science. London: Routledge, pp. 23–44.

15. Chin-Huat Wong, James Chin and Noraini Othman (2010) ‘Malaysia – towards a typology of electoral one-party state’, Democratization, 17(5), pp. 920–949.

16. William H. Riker (1962) The Theory of Political Coalition. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 39.

17. The Alliance party, which consisted UMNO, MCA and MIC, won Malaya’s first election in 1955, two years before the nation’s independence.

18. Arend Lijphart (1977) Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

19. Diane Mauzy (1983) Barisan Nasional – Coalition Government in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur and Singapore: Marican and Sons.

20. Also, there was a moderate opposite swing from PAS to UMNO in Kelantan and Besut, Terengganu, costing PAS three parliamentary seats.

21. There was an opposite swing away from the non-Malay-based opposition parties in some parts of Johor, Malacca and Pahang. Notably, UMNO lost three parliamentary seats to Gerakan and one to DAP, with three of them lost in straight fights, suggesting that there was some convergence of Malay and non-Malay discontent.

22. Zakaria Haji Ahmad (1989) ‘Malaysia: quasi democracy in a divided society’, in L. Diamond, J.J. Linz and S.M. Lipset (Eds), Democracy in Developing Countries. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, p. 366.

23. Report of the Proceedings of the 17th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference held in Kuala Lumpur, London, Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, September 1971. p.xx., as cited in Michael Ong (1987) ‘Government and opposition in parliament: rules of the game’, in Zakaria Haji Ahmad (Ed), Government and Politics in Malaysia. New York: Oxford University Press.

24. T.W. Tan (1982) Income Distribution and Determination in West Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, p. 55, as cited in Alis Puteh (2006) Language and Nation-Building: A Study of The Language Medium Policy in Malaysia. Petaling Jaya: SIRD, p. 96.

25. Geoff Wade (2009) ‘The origins and evolution of ethnocracy in Malaysia’, The Asia-Pacific Journal-Japan Focus, 7(47), p. 4 https://apjjf.org/-Geoff-Wade/3259/article.html accessed 24 August 2018.

26. See A.B. Shamsul (1986) From British to Bumiputera Rule. Singapore: ISEAS; E.T. Gomez and K.S. Jomo (1999) Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage And Profits (Revised Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Edmund Terence Gomez and Johan Saravanamuttu (Eds) (2003) The New Economic Policy in Malaysia: Affirmative Action, Horizontal Inequalities and Social Justice. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press.

27. Peter Wicks (1971) ‘The new realism: Malaysia since 13 May, 1969’, The Australian Quarterly, 3(4), p. 24.

28. Tengku Razaleigh told the author in a 2005 interview that he had worked on Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak and Gerakan to do the same after PBS, but Mahathir defeated the plot by warning that he would use security laws on them.

29. The photo can be seen at https://bigdogdotcom.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/negara-sawan-reduction/, accessed 2 September 2018.

30. See Seth Mydans (1998) ‘Indonesia turns its Chinese into scapegoats’, New York Times, 8 February, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/02/world/indonesia-turns-its-chinese-into-scapegoats.html, accessed 2 September 2018.

31. In a personal conversation with the author on 10 July 2018 Mahathir believed that his Chinese support came from his capital control policy that saved Chinese businesses from collapse which might have been caused by an International Monetary Fund solution. But this could not explain the retained support among majority Chinese voters who did not run businesses.

32. Mohammad Agus Yusoff (2001) ‘The politics of Malaysian federalism: the case of Kelantan’, Jebat, Jurnal Sejarah, Politik dan Strategi, pp. 1–24, 28.

33. Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin (2013) ‘Menilai Amanat Hadi Dengan Adil’, drmaza.com, 3 January, http://drmaza.com/home/?p=2255, accessed 3 September 2018.

34. For the context of the debate, see Tommy Thomas (2005) ‘Is Malaysia an Islamic state?’, The Malaysian Bar, 17 November, http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/constitutional_law/is_malaysia_an_islamic_state_.html, accessed 3 September 2018.

35. Liew Chin Tong (2015) ‘A decade after Hisham waved the keris’, Malaysiakini, 25 July, https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/305590, accessed 5 September 2018.

36. Joceline Tan (2006) ‘Hisham: the keris is here to stay’, The Star, 26 November, https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2006/11/26/hisham-the-keris-is-here-to-stay/, accessed 5 September 2018.

37. Teh Eng Hock (2008) ‘Hisham regrets wielding keris, he apologies to all Malaysians’, The Star, 26 April, https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2008/04/26/hisham-regrets-wielding-keris-he-apologises-to-all-malaysians/, accessed 5 September 2018.

38. When some non-Muslims died, their bodies were taken by the Islamic authorities for Islamic burial claiming they had quietly converted to Islam, a fact that was either unknown to or rejected by the grieving families. Beyond emotional shock, such posthumous identification as Muslim has also legal and financial implications to the families as the deceased’s civil marriage may become invalid and they lose their right to the deceased’s estate. For the famous case of Moorthy Maniam, see K. Shanmuga (2005) ‘Re Everest Moorthy’, Malaysian Bar, 29 December, http://www.malaysianbar.org.my/bar_news/berita_badan_peguam/re_everest_moorthy_.html?date=2017-11-01, accessed 6 September 2018.

39. Connie Levett (2006) ‘Mahathir challenges his successor’, The Age, 2 September, https://www.theage.com.au/world/mahathir-challenges-his-successor-20060902-ge31zi.html, accessed 5 September 2018.

40. Malaysiakini (2008) ‘UMNO’s mistake: selecting wrong candidates’, 10 April, https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/81208, accessed 5 September 2018.

41. Bernama (2018) ‘BN dead in Sabah, new coalition GBS formed’, Malaysiakini, 24 October, https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/448862, accessed 30 October 2018.

42. Straits Times (2018) ‘40 UMNO MPs “may join Mahathir’s party”, as Barisan Nasional mulls changing its name’, 27 October, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/40-umno-mps-may-join-mahathirs-party-as-barisan-nasional-mulls-changing-its-name, accessed 30 October 2018.