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Malaysia’s First-Past-the-Post Electoral System 235

to hold on to its home turf in the Malay heartland, not to win power from the
middle ground. British political scientist David Robertson (1976: 42) o ers a
powerful insight into centripetal competition: when competition is idle, the
party may choose to please the median party member rather than the median
voter because ‘vote maximisation, over and above what is necessary to win,
will not take place’. Precisely because UMNO and its allies have already lost
the Chinese, Indian, and Borneo votes, a middle-ground positioning will not
help in winning back mixed constituencies but will instead reduce its appeal
vis-à-vis PH in the Malay heartland. In this sense, the exodus of UMNO
parliamentarians to Bersatu only makes UMNO more short-term-minded and
dependent on PAS for its survival.
FPTP encourages unity by punishing losers but it has no normative preference
between inter-communal inclusion or exclusion. In 2018, Prime Minister
Najib Razak hoped to use PAS as spoiler to divide the opposition’s Malay votes
and enable BN’s victory as plurality winner in marginal constituencies. is
spoiler strategy did work in BN’s favour in 38 West Malaysian constituencies
where the combined votes for PH and PAS outnumbered those for BN but,
unintendedly, worked in PH’s favour in 30 others (Table 11.15). Conceding
the miscalculation, Najib is convinced a formal pact between UMNO and PAS
will immediately secure 30 additional seats (Today 2018). In such a scenario,
UMNO-PAS would then ip PH’s now-solid lead (from 98:67 to 68:97 seats),
putting UMNO-PAS in a strong position to co-opt East Malaysian parties or
even PH defectors to form the next government. e two parties have indeed
employed this strategy for all by-elections since GE14, winning the last three
in West Malaysia (Chart 11.2) (Wong forthcoming).

Table 11.15 Parliamentary constituencies in West Malaysia with
plurality winners
Largest party Second-largest party ird-largest party Total
PH BN PAS 24 30
PAS BN 6
BN PH PAS 22 38
PAS PH 16
PAS PH BN 1 9
BN PH 8
Total 77 77

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