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Towards a New Malaysia?

Meredith L. Weiss and Faisal S. Hazis

Malaysia’s 14th general election (GE14), held on 9 May 2018, was noteworthy
both for its conduct and for its result. After over six decades’ control since
independence in 1957, Malaysia’s ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN,
National Front) lost its grip on Parliament and control of nearly all state
governments. In its place, a new coalition—Pakatan Harapan (Pakatan or
PH, Alliance of Hope)—came into power, backed most importantly also by
the state-based Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan, Sabah Heritage Party). Any
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number of factors played a role in shaping voters’ choices, both building
support for Pakatan and whittling it away from the BN. ese ranged from
anger at BN rent-seeking and resentment against incumbent Prime Minister
Najib Razak, to frustration with rising living costs, concern for communal or
regional rights and privileges, the yen for a more Islamist order, the respective
parties’ records of governance and generosity, and a simple desire for change.
at key parties fragmented on both sides also mattered—most importantly,
the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), lead party in the BN,
and Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS, Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party) each gave
rise to o shoots after internal rifts, as described below (see also the chapters
here especially by Su an and Lee, and Ahmad Fauzi and Che Hamdan). Any
number of factors moulded how those choices aggregated and translated into
seats, from gerrymandered constituency boundaries, to an atypical midweek
polling day, to the vagaries of rst-past-the-post voting rules (see Wong Chin
Huat’s chapter). ere can be no easy answer, in other words, to the question
of either why BN lost or why Pakatan won. Regardless, particularly at a time
of both regional and global democratic regression (Parameswaran 2018) or
recession (Diamond 2015) and authoritarian backsliding, Malaysia seems to

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