Special Issue Introduction: The 2018 Malaysian General Election: The Return of Mahathir and the Exit of UMNO

Abstract

In coming years, 9 May will be regarded a watershed moment in Malaysia’s political history; on the same level as the 13 May 1969 race riots. After 61 years of uninterrupted rule by the Malayan Alliance, and its successor, Barisan Nasional (BN), the governing coalition dominated by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and led by Malaysia’s sixth prime minister Najib Tun Razak lost the 14th General Election. In a devastating defeat, BN lost its majority in the national parliament and only retained two of the 12 state governments contested. BN also recorded its lowest share of the popular vote, capturing only 33.8 per cent (a sharp drop of 13.6 per cent).

What was even more incredible was the person who led the opposition alliance, Pakatan Harapan (PH, or the Alliance of Hope), to victory. Mahathir Mohammad, Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, holding office from 1981 to 2003 (a total of 22 years), came out of retirement, established a new political party, Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM), took over the leadership of the opposition PH, and led them into government. He took over as leader when he was 90 years old. On 10 May 2018, the day he was sworn in, he was 92 years old and is now the oldest serving elected premier in the world.

The magnitude of a Mahathir-led victory cannot be underestimated. Most experts on Malaysian politics gave Mahathir and PH little chance of overthrowing Najib Razak and BN. After all, Najib and BN held all the cards. BN, or more precisely UMNO – the dominant party in the coalition and backbone of BN – had unlimited financial resources, crucial for patronage and funding a multifaceted campaign. Perhaps more importantly, UMNO controlled all the state apparatus involved in conducting the elections, from the Electoral Commission (EC) to government departments responsible for patronage, intelligence, and voter registration. These organisations were openly biased in favour of BN. The EC was notorious for gerrymandering boundaries in favour of BN, and the electoral roll was riddled with suspect voters (Chan 2018). The civil service machinery behaved more like the BN election machinery than a neutral institution. The mainstream media – all linked to the government – openly called on voters to reject Mahathir and support continuity under Najib. Several sultans, always a political factor in nine of Malaysia’s states, openly questioned Mahathir and PH (Bhavan Jaipragas 2017). The Selangor sultan famously claimed that Mahathir had an “inferiority complex” (Selangor Sultan 2017). Mahathir was accused of selling out the Malay race; the most infamous headline was “DAP plan to manipulate Dr M revealed: PM” (New Straits Times 2018). Malays were warned that Mahathir would take away the privileges and the affirmative action enjoyed by the Malay community, and be beholden to the Democratic Action Party (DAP) – a Chinese-dominant one. In Malaysia’s highly racial political system, accusing someone of selling out their race can create significant political damage.

On top of these factors, Najib and UMNO thought that his informal alliance with PAS, the Islamic party, would give them the upper hand in rural Malay constituencies.1 Winning these constituencies is crucial to triumphing in the election overall, as they account for about half of all the seats in parliament. PAS had always been UMNO’s arch-enemy in the rural areas, and this was the first time since the mid-1970s that it agreed to cooperate with UMNO – appealing to UMNO’s political base along religious and racial grounds. Najib’s biggest weakness, the 1MDB (1 Malaysia Development Berhad) kleptocracy scandal, was not expected to have any real impact among rural Malay voters (see Teh 2018; Wright and Bradley 2018). After all, UMNO claimed that 1MDB was “too complex” for rural voters to understand, and that they were interested in more “bread and butter” issues instead. 1MDB, thus, was labelled an urban issue (Free Malaysia Today 2017). BN was projected to hold onto its core rural Malay base, and similarly retain its dominant position in the two states of East Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak – both seen as “safe deposit states” and comprising a fifth of the seats to be competed over nationally. After all, BN had made gains in the 2016 Sarawak election, picking up seats from the opposition.