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Elite Fragmentation and Party Splits:

Explaining the Breakdown of UMNO in

Malaysia’s 14th General Election

Faisal S. Hazis

All eyes were on Malay-majority seats as the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN,
National Front) and opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan (PH, Alliance of
Hope) squared o in Malaysia’s hotly contested 14th general election (GE14).
ese ‘Malay seats’ were considered to be the key battleground to win federal
power, as they constituted more than half of the parliamentary seats up
for grabs. e opposition’s failure to make signi cant inroads in the Malay
heartland in the 13th general election (GE13) demonstrated that they needed
to win at least half of the 122 Malay seats in GE14 to have any real chance of
unseating BN. In GE13, BN won 82 and lost 37 Malay seats. ese 82 seats
made up more than half the BN’s total of 133 parliamentary seats; most of the
rest came from Sabah and Sarawak. Clearly, Malay seats saved BN in 2013 and
it could not a ord to lose them in 2018.
With the departure of Hadi Awang’s Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS, Pan-
Malaysian Islamic Party) from former opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat
(PR, People’s Alliance) in 2015 and Anwar Ibrahim’s continued imprisonment,
PH turned to Mahathir Mohamad to lead the charge against the United Malays
National Organisation (UMNO), the lynchpin party of the BN. e former
premier was expected to engineer a ‘Malay tsunami’ that would break UMNO’s
stranglehold on Malay seats. He retains in uence among Malays, and his track
record of bringing progress to Malaysia could appeal to voters disgruntled by
rising costs of living, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s feeble leadership, and a

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