🇲🇾Status quo sticks in Malaysian state elections

Hello friends!

Malaysia has moved on quickly from the state elections held in six key states on Saturday. Now it’s all about the Kuala Lumpur High Court throwing out the abuse of power charges against former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin. 

The headline is very much ‘status quo maintained across states’ but within that there’s some juicy or telling developments that I’ve cracked into today.

As always when I knock-up one of these post-election round ups, I’d like to add the caveat that this is by no means exhaustive and will not tell any Malaysian voter anything they don’t already know. I’ve linked to a lot of Malaysiakini and Bernama pieces throughout and they have done a fantastic job in covering the lead up and the results, so please look to them for more. 

Let’s crack in!

Erin Cook

Home Sweet Home

It’s a clean sweep in Terengganu. For the first time in the state’s history, there will be no opposition with Perikatan Nasional candidates picking up all 32 seats. Certainly time to celebrate for PN cadres, but not a great situation for democracy in the state. 

“In the legislative assembly, it is very important to have a critical opposition. Although the role of checks and balances can be played by the backbenchers, their function will not be the same as a constructive opposition,” Mohd Yusri Ibrahim, the policy studies director at the Universiti Malaysia Terengganu’s economics and social development faculty, told Bernama.

Don’t worry about it so much, says PAS. Party boss Abdul Hadi Awang, whose party picked up 27 of the 32 seats, reassured that the incoming government will be receptive.

“We will encourage a culture of advising, including the people themselves who can critique the government. In fact, it can gladly be said that in Islam, assemblypersons can critique and air views despite there being no opposition,” he told media over the weekend, as per Malaysiakini. 

PN stablemate Bersatu picked up the remaining five seats in the assembly. UMNO lost all 10 previously held positions. 

Old guard shake up

Whoa, DAP! The Democratic Action Party, the centre-left Pakatan Harapan member, is a long time punching bag of conservative forces in Malaysian politics. They’re also one of the biggest victors in the six weekend elections.

The party won 46 of the 47 races it entered across Negeri Sembilan, Penang, Selangor and Kedah. Vice-chairman Nga Kor Ming pointed specifically at the Sungai Pelek seat it won in Selangor, where 60% of constituents are Malay. 

It’s going better than UMNO, that’s for sure. James Chin is in the Straits Times this week asking if it’s the end of the road for the grand old party, a no doubt click-inducing headline but unthinkable just a few years ago. Still, Chin notes UMNO recorded a success rate of just 17.6% after picking up 19 of the 108 seats contested. Ouch. And when compared to the great successes of the PN cabal, like in Terengganu above, “no matter how you analyse it, Malay voters rejected UMNO,” Chin writes. And if Malays won’t vote for UMNO - who will? 

Expect some major internal upsets in the coming months as heads roll over the failure. The alliance including DAP is likely to come under the microscope too. Personally, I’m going to wait for Bridget Welsh to go deep here. This is an enormous flashpoint in the party’s life. I need the experts!  

It’s certainly not that Malaysia is getting less conservative. Indeed, the immediate analysis (or even the pre-, this has been obvious for awhile) is that UMNO is simply not viewed as conservative enough anymore. The shacking up with DAP has allowed critics (PAS, largely) to point fingers and say: see! UMNO was once the party for Malays, but are not any longer. Now we are. 

It’s all about the youths, according to this report from Nikkei Asia. Survey data from Merdeka Centre last June found youth voters “retain strong Islamic consciousness in their outlook on personal aspirations and expectations [for] public life.” This played out in last year’s general election where PAS and PN won big across peninsular Malaysia and this weekend’s gains has only entrenched the so-called Green Wave. 

It’s all at once bad, good and neutral for Anwar Ibrahim

Interestingly, Hisomuddin Bakar from the Ilham Centre told Nikkei his view which stands at odds with the more pessimistic coverage on what this all means for Anwar Ibrahim and his government: “The focus on economic recovery and reducing the cost of living should be prioritised. I believe that when the economy recovers and improves further, the people will return their support to Anwar with [his] asking,” he said. Interesting! 

This obsession with the ‘referendum on Anwar’ framing came at the expense of local issues and may have had a high cost, RSIS’s Ariel Tan writes in the Straits Times this week. ‘Attention turned to the performance of state administrations and campaign manifestos in earnest only in the last two weeks before the election day,’ she writes. Have to admit that’s on me too! 

This is an excellent piece and worth reading in full, but I thought this was a stand out paragraph that really sums up where we’re at and how the next few years may shape up: ‘While voters expressed concern over the economic outlook and cost of living, the federal government failed to persuade Malay voters of its capability and commitment to solve their economic woes, despite its numerous announcements of economic initiatives and high-profile investment commitments such as those from multinational firms Tesla and Infineon.’