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Politics of Reform and the Triumph of Pakatan Harapan 103

along BN’s electoral path. Earlier collapses of Sabah governments were usually
due to leadership tussles, but since UMNO’s establishment in the state, BN
dominance had stabilised, premised on well-executed power sharing. is
latest rupture represents a collapse of the BN model of power-sharing with a
severely denuded UMNO due to Sha e Apdal’s ouster.
e nal distribution of seats in the state contest shows the complexity of
the Sabah outcome: Warisan won 21 seats, UMNO 17, Parti Bersatu Sabah
(PBS) 6, DAP 6, United Pasokmomogun Kadazandusun Murut Organisation
(UPKO) 5, PKR 2, Parti Solidariti Tanah Airku (Solidariti) 2, and Parti Bersatu
Rakyat Sabah (PBRS) 1. UMNO and Warisan captured the major vote-shares,
as Chart 5.13 indicates. PH parties emerged as the most signi cant third
force. In terms of popular votes, UMNO won a plurality of 42 per cent, while
Warisan and PH combined garnered just over 47 per cent. e other parties,
not shown in the chart, managed to garner some 10.4 per cent of the vote,
showing the rather plural terrain of Sabah politics underlying its well-known
uidity. In the aftermath of the election a series of bizarre events occurred,
including the illegal swearing-in of Musa Aman, the incumbent UMNO chief
minister, who then absconded from Sabah for a period of time and resurfaced
in August 2018 at Subang Jaya Hospital for treatment for an unspeci ed
ailment. In the end, UPKO’s ve candidates threw their weight behind the
Warisan-led government.

Conclusion

e triumph of the PH coalition in Malaysia’s GE14 represents a major change
in electoral politics, premised on the reform agendas of the Reformasi era of
twenty years earlier, howsoever modi ed those reforms were to adapt to the
changing dynamics of Malaysian politics and its revolving political doors.
Central to this argument is the fact that PKR, a child of Reformasi, was at the
core of the PH coalition, which itself must be viewed as continuous with a
form of politics which had begun with the Barisan Alternatif and its successor,
Pakatan Rakyat. e inclusion of Mahathir’s party, Bersatu, when PR was
reconstituted as PH with the loss of PAS, represented a development along the
path of reform politics, necessary to the toppling of the BN ruling coalition.
e spark came with BN’s loss of its two-thirds majority of parliamentary seats
in 2008. e 2013 election saw BN’s popular vote reduced to about 47 per
cent, then in 2018, it plummeted to 34 per cent.
e PH coalition of political forces also valorised a path-dependent
consociational or centripetal politics of power-sharing, which I term mediated

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