🇲🇾 So you want to be on top? The Incumbent

Part 1 in a short series on Malaysia's election

November 15, 2022

Hello friends!

In the home stretch now for the Malaysian election. Over the next few days, we’ll talk about who is in the race and what the coalitions look like. And then on Friday, I’ll bring you a recent chat with a friend of the letter who helps Malaysians vote from abroad in what has become — again — a bit of a sloppy mess. 

So, today! Incumbent Ismail Sabri. A longtime UMNO stalwart who was tossed from government in 2018 along with his cadres and yet found himself prime minister without an election last August. He’s battled quite reasonable questions about his legitimacy at the helm since but has guided the country and, crucially, the economy, with a relatively solid hand in this new stage of the pandemic. 

Will he win it outright? And if does, how long will he stay?

See you tomorrow!Erin Cook

🇲🇾 Ismail Sabri is on top — but can he stay there?

Ismail Sabri claimed the top job back in August last year and is feeling pretty good about his odds, according to Nikkei Asia. He’s won the backing of the UMNO party — although there is speculation he has fallen out with party boss Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Likewise, many of his UMNO allies did not secure candidature which has left him disappointed and no doubt quite exposed.

Ismail Sabri is standing firm. In his own words: “I am still the poster boy and prime minister candidate for BN in the 15th general election (GE15).” That he’s been forced to repeatedly confirm he is the candidate doesn’t bode well. Clearly, trust is low in him within the media and that is very interesting to me. Or maybe this is just Australian politics of the 2010s trauma and it doesn’t really mean much! 

Still, he’s feeling good. 1MDB and GST plagued UMNO in the 2018 election, he said, but since those have been resolved it should be a clear shot back to PJ. “They [other parties] will not find any issues with my administration or me because our gross domestic product growth for the second quarter was the highest in ASEAN, and inflation is far below [that of] developed economies,” he told Nikkei Asia.

This is certainly true, but as we see in elections everywhere, what the numbers in the newspaper say and how people feel about their relative prosperity are two different factors.  

UMNO dominates the Barisan Nasional coalition, but it also features the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and the United Sabah People's Party. This is a long-term agreement of members and the solid nature of the coalition is one win that competitors haven’t exactly worked out yet, which we’ll cover further in the coming days. BN’s manifesto shows a coalition not taking chances.

Released Monday night, it promises families with incomes under 2,208 ringgit ($466) a month will be eligible for the proposed Assistive Basic Income. If income drops below that 2,208 ringgit threshold it will be topped up via cash transfers. 

“In addition to the various welfare initiatives and subsidy programs, it is important that our country continues to explore additional new approaches to help reduce the burden of the rising cost of living,” Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who also helms BN, said of the plan, as per Bloomberg.

The coalition also boasts other savvy ideas, like fully subsidised higher education for students from low-income households and reforms to how high-ranking appointees in the anti-corruption agency are selected. 

Is it enough to get Ismail Sabri across the line? Voters in Bera, Pahang, his home constituency, have given him a ringing endorsement according to this report from Channel News Asia of a campaign visit. A collection of vox pops show voters not too keen on speculating that he’d maintain the prime ministership in the case of a UMNO win, but are happy for him to continue representing Bera.  

Further reading:

Notwithstanding the uncertainty that surrounds this election, the betting this week is that UMNO will fare best, perhaps poising it to stage a full recovery. Its ground-level machinery and business links have been reactivated. Its Malay constituents, informed by the last election and the diminution of their privileging, are likely to discipline their voting. If the question for the last election was whether Malaysia could transition to ‘full’ democracy, the question this time is whether UMNO can reinstitute its single-party dominance.

But whatever the outcome of this election, its conduct attests in several ways to the benignity of Malaysian politics in the contemporary global milieu.

In fact, it’s been argued that the instability of the caretaker PM9 Ismail Sabri Yaakob-led administration actually resulted in a stronger Parliament and allowed bipartisan initiatives, like the anti-hopping law, to get discussed, tweaked and passed.

But what’s also true is that a gomen without majority support would mean perpetual manoeuvrings as well as delays with the passing of important legislation.

“This only fuels the opposition narrative that a vote for any BN candidate is a vote for Zahid, when it is in fact Ismail’s relative popularity that is needed to win votes,” BowerGroupAsia director Adib Zalkapli told The Straits Times.

Talk of candidates being forced to sign declarations agreeing to give Zahid free rein to negotiate post-electoral pacts including the selection of Cabinet ministers – making him de facto premier – had been rife, although the Umno president and other party officials have denied such claims as scurrilous political attacks.

To his credit, Zahid has persistently asserted that Umno vice-president Ismail is BN’s choice of prime minister. But the fact that he is being forced to repeat himself – as recently as Thursday – indicates that many believe otherwise.

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