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Malaysia’s First-Past-the-Post Electoral System 231

this writing, BN is left only with 36 parliamentarians from UMNO on the
peninsula, one each from UMNO Sabah, the Malaysian Chinese Association
(MCA), and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), and an Orang Asli direct
member who won a by-election.
BN’s fast meltdown after losing power is comparable to how three previous
opposition coalitions—Gagasan Rakyat/Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah,
established in 1990; Barisan Alternatif in 1999; and PR, formed after the
opposition’s 2008 surge—disintegrated after standing together in just one
election. Instead of a united multiethnic rival in BN, the PH government now
faces a fragmented opposition of three communal/regional blocs: BN with 40
seats (37 of which are from UMNO), GPS with 19, and PAS with 18 (Table
11.12) (Wong forthcoming).
e persistent failure of Malaysia’s opposition coalitions to cohere after
electoral setbacks recommends revisiting the concept of party-reduction.
Cox points out that while FPTP elections force voters to support only two
parties in their constituencies, the two parties need not be the same across
constituencies, hence possibly resulting in more than two parties overall with
local niches. What drives a national two-party system is the concentration of
national executive power, in an executive presidency or single-party government
in a parliamentary system, where a single large political prize forces political
players into two large blocs, with the hope to share power (Cox 1997: 181–
202). Such FPTP ruthlessness, however, has its limits in a divided society like
Malaysia, as medium-sized parties may survive on communal or regional bases
and party-reduction can, at best, produce two permanent coalitions instead of
two parties.
e sustainability of a two-coalition format then hinges on parties’ cost-
bene t calculations regarding coalition membership. e cost of compromising
one’s ideological positions and goals may be outweighed by two bene ts: vote-
pooling in elections and power-sharing in government, but they play out
in six di erent scenarios (Table 11.13). Parties contesting in communally-
mixed constituencies but without a majority vote-base always need coalitions,
as is evident for Malaysia’s Indian-based parties, which have not a single
Indian-majority constituency to contest. Parties contesting in homogenous
constituencies, however, may nd an electoral pact that dilutes their ideological
appeals not bene cial or even counter-productive, as was the case for PAS and
DAP, which shied away from any overt electoral pact until 1990. e bene ts
of power-sharing are obvious for parties in government and a strong coalition,
but non-existent for opposition parties in a weak position. is explains both

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