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158 Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali

(Haika 2018). Yet lest its religion-baiting scare away non-Malay voters, BN also
had to step up its incentives to those constituents. UMNO’s biggest concession
to the Chinese community was a promise nally to recognise the United
Examinations Certi cate (UEC), a privately operated certi cation scheme
among Chinese independent high schools for entry into public universities—a
long-held aim of Chinese educationists, many of them in the DAP, and a
position that even PAS had espoused for a time, during its more progressive
phase in the early post-Reformasi era (Fathi Aris 2001; Nasrudin 2018). e
BN camp remained con dent until the very late stages of campaigning, with
many polls, including those of the usually credible Merdeka Center, predicting
a win for BN, albeit a slim one (Zurairi 2018b). e eventual outcome—that
PH won, with a simple majority victory of 113 parliamentary seats, boosted
further by 8 seats from ally Parti Warisan Sabah (Sabah Heritage Party), led
by former UMNO Vice President Sha e Apdal—turned out to be perhaps the
rudest shock of the contesting BN politicians’ lives.
at GE14 would see a neck-and-neck ght between the incumbent BN
and PH was a foregone conclusion, with most pundits fully expecting that
PH could win only if it could lure su cient Malay-Muslims to join the non-
Malays already ranked against BN. In the end, analysts, including even BN
10
politicians, seemed to agree that BN’s defeat was triggered by a shift in votes
that cut across ethnicity, religion, and region (Gomez 2018); contrary to what
many in UMNO seem to have anticipated, Islamist scaremongering had only
limited impact. A constellation of factors—including the still-potent legacy
of the Reformasi movement Anwar Ibrahim propelled in the late 1990s; Dr
Mahathir’s statesman-like aura as an esteemed Malay-Muslim nationalist, widely
respected by Malaysians of all ethno-religious stripes; and disappointment in
Najib Razak’s mismanagement of national co ers—combined to deliver BN
its lowest parliamentary seat-count (54 out of 222) and lowest share of the
popular vote (36 per cent) ever (see Su an and Lee’s chapter for details). In
the months ahead, BN would su er further blows with the withdrawal of
all its component parties except the original UMNO, MCA, and Malaysian
Indian Congress; the exit from UMNO of in uential personalities such as
former Minister of International Trade and Industry Mustapha Mohamad and
former Foreign Minister Anifah Aman; and rami cations from Najib Razak’s
1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) nancial scandal, in connection with
which many UMNO and even PAS gures are said to be under investigation by
a revitalized Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission for allegedly bene ting
from the proceeds of money-laundering on a global scale (Chin 2018).

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