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86 Johan Saravanamuttu

Reconstituting Reform Politics—Pakatan Harapan’s Emergence

In this section I will attempt to show that progressive steps on a path valorised
by institutional, ideological, and programmatic developments ultimately
led to the PH’s success. Opposition coalitions prior to the PH, including its
progenitor PR, were unable to rupture the path-dependent success of BN
because these dimensions of oppositional continuity were weak.
e 1999 formation of the Barisan Alternatif (BA) electoral coalition—
comprising Parti Keadilan Nasional (Keadilan, later renamed Parti Keadilan
Rakyat or PKR), DAP, and PAS—provided the major thrust of path-dependent
political-reform agendas on the electoral stage. Malaysia’s electoral history has
been strewn with shifts in and breakups of coalition politics from the 1950s
onwards, but one major ruling coalition, the Alliance, emerged to dominate
politics in the 1950s, succeeded by the Barisan Nasional from the 1970s to
the early 2000s. is two-stage movement of BN-crafted politics created a
path of electoral success premised on the BN’s institutional strength and on
its programmes and policies of ethnic accommodation, which I term mediated
communalism. is trajectory of success has been di cult to displace.
Considering the second stage, oppositional coalitions since the 1950s have
lacked sustenance owing to failures in crafting coalition strategies, particularly
with a view to establishing e ective ways of accommodating ethnic di erences
for electoral success. Importantly, in the 1960s, the leftist Socialist Front
coalition, comprising the Chinese-supported Labour Party and the Malay-
based Parti Rakyat, mounted a veritable challenge and then self-destructed,
not without considerable help from government repression, such as detentions
under the Internal Security Act. In this case, ideological similitude was an
inadequate factor to ensure the two left-leaning parties’ coherence, in the face
of the coalition’s weak rural base.
Minor electoral pacts followed, but it was only in the 1990s that one saw
the formation of fairly well-institutionalized opposition coalitions. One such
attempt was the parallel formation of Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah (APU,
Muslim Unity Front) and Gagasan Rakyat (People’s Might) for the 1990
election, bringing together Muslim and non-Muslim political parties into
two electoral pacts. e inability of the pact to create a single coalition of
political parties showed that ideological and religious di erences obstructed
the creation of the necessary institutional arrangement for a successful
coalition. e much more formalized coalition of BA was cobbled together
for the 1999 election and, in 2008 and 2013, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) presented
a more institutionalized reform-oriented coalition that held rm until 2015.
Even then, just as we witnessed the breakup of the BA on religious/ideological

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