Category: Malaysia

Nomination Day was April 20: we now know the full list of candidates for all 222 parliamentary races and 505 state assembly races. Election Day is less than two weeks away now. Some very interesting analysis of the Nomination Day results is available at Malaysia’s Dilemma, especially this recent piece by Bridget Welsh. We can appreciate this and other analyses better by looking at all of the data together, something which I’ll begin to do here.

This wouldn’t be possible even ten years ago, but Malaysia’s online media have done a great job of providing data on these elections. I’ve grabbed the data on candidates from the Electoral Commission. Let’s look first at the head-to-head contests: given that these are SMD elections and that both the incumbent BN and opposition PR are contesting in every district (except for one district in which the UMNO candidate didn’t file his papers on time), these will be the matchups that matter.

Parliamentary Elections, Peninsular Malaysia

			PR
		DAP	PAS	PKR	Total
	GER	8	1	1	10
	MCA	25	1	12	38
BN	MIC	1	1	7	9
	PPP	1	0	0	1
	UMNO	1	61	44	106
	Total	36	64	64	164

Looks similar to old patterns, with the Malaysian Chinese Association and (largely Chinese) Gerakan up against the (largely Chinese) DAP and UMNO versus (largely Malay) PAS. However, we see here a real attempt by PKR to continue to break the ethnic politics mold, with significant numbers of PKR candidates against both UMNO and MCA. Let’s see if this holds at the state level:

State Assembly Elections, Peninsular Malaysia

			PR
		DAP	PAS	PKR	Total
	GER	18	1	10	29
	MCA	69	3	16	88
BN	MIC	5	2	11	18
	PPP	3	0	1	4
	UMNO	0	215	91	306
	Total	95	221	129	445

In short, it does. Now let’s take a look at the parliamentary races in East Malaysia, where the partisanship is so very different.

Parliamentary Elections, East Malaysia

			PR
		DAP	PAS	PKR	Total
	LDP	1	0	0	1
	PB	0	1	0	1
	PBB	3	4	6	13
	PBRS	0	0	1	1
BN	PBS	1	1	3	5
	PRS	0	0	6	6
	SPDP	2	0	2	4
	SUPP	6	0	1	7
	UMNO	1	1	13	15
	UPKO	1	0	3	4
	Total	15	7	35	57

There are two things to take away from these tables. First is the simple fact that PR is contesting in every constituency, which is a new and striking development. Second is that PKR is really taking it to UMNO, which faces PKR in 13/15 of its races (which are all in Sabah and Labuan). I interpret this as a direct attempt to head off UMNO’s expansion into valuable territory.

So how much do party nominations reflect “their” ethnic constituencies? Recall that most of Malaysia’s parties have clear ethnic bases, and this is especially true among the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition and in the peninsula. I was able to find data on ethnic composition by each electoral constituency from Utusan Malaysia‘s online GE13 portal. Let’s look first at the percentage of each district’s population which is Malay, comparing its distribution across UMNO and other BN parties in the peninsula. First, parliamentary districts, then state assembly districts.

(These are kernel density plots, but they look a bit different than you might expect because the distribution of percentages is bounded on [0,100].) It is abundantly clear here that UMNO gets to represent the Malay majority districts. How does this compare for the three parties in the DR? Let’s repeat the exercise.

These results are also quite clear: PAS tends to get the districts with a big Malay majority, DAP the districts with small Malay minorities, and the PKR tends to occupy the middle range. The only exception is that in state races, there is not as large of a divergence between PKR and PAS at the highest ends of the distribution of Malayness. These seats are still largely contested by PAS, but not exclusively.

The final topic I’ll take on today is the prevalence of third (and fourth, and fifth…) party candidates. These are sometimes independents, sometimes not. Let’s look at how these break down.

Third Party Candidates by Region

Parliament
		East Malaysia	Peninsula	Total
	No	16	116	132
	Yes	41	49	90
	Total	57	165	222
State Assembly
		East Malaysia	Peninsula	Total
	No	1	324	325
Third Party	Yes	59	121	180
	Total	60	445	505

These figures indicate that third-party entrants are normal in East Malaysia, and relatively uncommon in the peninsula. We can also detect differences in party competition from non-BN and non-PR parties.

Independents among Third-Party Candidates

Parliament
		East Malaysia	Peninsula	Total
	No	23	3	26
Independent	Yes	18	46	64
	Total	41	49	90
State Assembly
		East Malaysia	Peninsula	Total
	No	29	11	40
Independent	Yes	30	110	140
	Total	59	121	180

This shows us that among districts with third-party entrants, in Peninsular Malaysia these entrants were almost always independents. In East Malaysia, districts with third-party entrants had a mix of both independents and true third-party candidates representing parties like SAPP and STAR.

In all, lots to be learned from just the publicly available data, but of course this should all be combined with the excellent contextual analyses being produced by scholars in from Malaysia and analysts in the field. But a couple of strong conclusions emerge: (1) ethnicity matters in both coalitions, (2) regional differences in party competition remain large, and (3) the PR has mounted a unified and truly national campaign, with PKR continuing to try to break down the Law of Party=Ethnicity that has characterized Malaysian politics since independence.

Earlier in the series: Preview (1) | Preview (2) | Preview (3) | Preview (4) | Preview (5) | Preview (6) | Preview (7)

A new ruling by Malaysia’s Registrar of Societies on the Democratic Action Party‘s Central Executive Committee illustrates how electoral authoritarian regimes use the law as a tool of regime maintenance.

Malaysia’s political regime is commonly understood by political scientists as an electoral authoritarian (PDF) or competitive authoritarian regime. What distinguishes such regimes is that elections are regularly held and vigorously contested, but the incumbent regime has such wide latitude to manipulate the electoral process as to render the elections non-competitive. Individual politicians from the ruling party may lose in their own races, but party (or in this case, the coalition) itself never loses power. In these kinds of elections, the real competition—such that it exists—is within the ruling party or coalition.

In this sense, one might describe city politics in Chicago or state politics in Texas as a form of subnational electoral authoritarianism.

In such regimes, the law is an instrument for regime maintenance. In the Malaysian case, a lot of thought goes into the regulation of collective behavior. That is why Malaysia has something called the Registrar of Societies: although these are actually quite common in Commonwealth countries, in Malaysia the Registrar can determine what types of people can assemble on what types of circumstances, with clear political implications. The Registrar of Societies is under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is what I like to call a “power portfolio” in the Malaysian cabinet; the current Minister is Hishammuddin Hussein.

Under Malaysian law, specifically the Societies Act of 1966 (PDF), political parties may only exist if they register, and a condition of registration is fulfilling a series of legal requirements regulating the internal affairs of the society. For example, a political party must follow certain rules in internal elections. If the society is deemed to be not complying with these requirements, it can be “de-registered.” This means, among other things, that a party cannot participate in elections. While the current news is that the DAP will not be de-registered, that is the implicit threat that the DAP faces right now.

Seem far-fetched? It’s really not. Back in the late 1980s, Mahathir Mohamad dealt with an insurgent faction within UMNO by (allegedly) rigging internal elections for the party’s top spots. When confronted, he argued—successfully—that if UMNO leadership elections were rigged, then UMNO is an illegal society under Malaysian law. Thus UMNO was disbanded, allowing Mahathir to create a new party called UMNO Baru (“New UMNO”) which only admitted his allies. The UMNO Baru affair sets a clear precedent for the challenges facing the DAP today.

Indeed, the Societies Act gives the Registrar of Societies even wider latitude to regulate collective behavior. According to section 5(1),

It shall be lawful for the Minister in his absolute discretion by order to declare unlawful any society or branch or class or description of any societies which in his opinion, is or is being used for purposes prejudicial to or incompatible with the interest of the security of Malaysia or any part thereof, public order or morality.

In practice, these wide discretionary powers are not used that often. They can be, and that is what makes them important. But the recent ruling about the DAP’s Central Executive Committee by the Registrar of Societies should be understood as the everyday politics of regime maintenance under authoritarian rule.

Earlier in the series: Preview (1) | Preview (2) | Preview (3) | Preview (4) | Preview (5) | Preview (6)