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How to Transform Malaysia’s Regime 247

ordinary voters have of their state and its leaders. And of course, should the rules
change, even just for elections—as Wong Chin Huat recommends Malaysians
consider—we might need to rethink fundamental premises about the sorts
of coalitional considerations and voting behaviours Helen Ting details, the
strategic posturing Haris Zuan or David Kloos explore, the elite alignments
Faisal Hazis traces, and the ideological framings Hew Wai Weng compares.
To assess Malaysia’s possible trajectories requires a grasp of long-percolating
root causes for the changes now underway—the underlying patterns the
preceding chapters reveal—and not just late-breaking catalysts. (Of course, the
latter do also matter to election outcomes, as the chapters by Ibrahim Su an
and Lee Tai De or Ross Tapsell, for instance, make clear.) Understanding what
has happened over the span of recent elections and what remains constant
illuminates the potential and options for legal, institutional, economic, and
cultural transformation.

e Roots of Transition

As Johan Saravanamuttu’s path-analysis illuminates, much of this transition
has been very long in coming. Although Mahathir Mohamad served as an
important spur to jolt the margins, to give him and his party too much
credit slights history. Indeed, doing so could be disheartening, not just given
Mahathir’s own spotted history as a democratic reformer. To assume it was
the fact of his return alone that tipped the scales presumes an unyieldingly
feudal political culture, in which rural Malay voters (the focus of so much
pundit attention) follow their ‘protector’ out of habit rather than in light of
grievances they share with non-Malay or urban, wealthier voters. Mahathir
did help to sway votes, but by his messaging, his association with past
developmentalist glory, and what he signalled for the coalition’s objectives, not
just his presence per se. And he represents one of several much-discussed one-
o causes or contingent last straws. ese matter but are not, by their nature,
recurrent—particularly the 1MDB mega-scandal and the wide breadth of the
gap between rank-and- le United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)
members’ support for Najib and the extent to which a sclerotic party structure
propped him in place, even as UMNO’s capacity to weather another serious
rift diminished (see Faisal’s chapter in particular).
Deeper-rooted, longer-developing features within the polity reveal more
about what could make this election a sign of a tectonic shift rather than a
‘tsunami’, as commonly labelled. Recurrent tsunamis are not really desirable,
given the destruction they wreak, but it is only to be expected that the political

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