Category: Malaysia

In two previous posts on the upcoming elections in Malaysia, I’ve shown data from the previous elections in 2008. In both cases, I restricted my analysis to Peninsular Malaysia. Why?

To answer this, take a look at the map.

About 60% of Malaysia is located in Borneo, but it has about 20% of the population. That means that population density differs pretty dramatically. The ethnic dynamics also differ strikingly: Sabah is 80% bumiputera, but only a small fraction of that is Malay; Sarawak is 72% bumiputera, but only 23% Malay. The histories of Sabah and Sarawak are distinct from the Peninsula too. In fact, Malaysia was only formed when Sabah (formerly British North Borneo) and Sarawak (formerly the domain of the Brooke family) joined Malaya (along with Singapore for a short time). Never before had these territories been ruled together; historically, Malaya was associated with the Sultanate of Malacca, and Sabah and Sarawak with Brunei and Sulu.

As a consequence of all of this, party politics doesn’t work the same way. UMNO and MCA have branches in Sabah but not Sarawak—at least, not that I’m aware of, and Chinese politics both in and out of the BN often takes place in other parties that are predominantly but not exclusively Chinese (like the SUPP or the Sabah Progressive Party). Opposition politics also doesn’t work the same way, for many bumiputeras are not Muslims, meaning that PAS does not have the same constituency there.

All in all, you can’t look at party competition in the same way in these two states using the same lens. But these states are currently big BN strongholds, and looking forward, UMNO needs Sabah and Sarawak to retain power. The fact that these states are different does not mean that they are unimportant—just different.

One key issue is the BN’s longstanding policy of favoring bumiputera interests through the New Economic Policy and its successors. Because UMNO dominates the BN, and UMNO is Malay party at heart (despite being open to all bumiputeras), it is widely believed that non-Malay and non-Muslim bumiputeras don’t effectively benefit in the same way that Malays do. Watch this space for further discussion. UPDATE: See the New Mandala GE13 series post with Patau Rubis of Sarawak for more.

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

In my first Malaysian 13th General Elections Preview, I broke down vote returns by party in the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition. Another revealing exercise is to break down by district which kinds of parties contested the election, to see which kinds of BN parties contest with which kinds of opposition parties. Here are the results, focusing only on head-to-head contests in the peninsula.

Head to Head Contests, GE12, Peninsular Malaysia Only

It is important to recall that prior to GE12, there was no formal opposition coalition. That was created only after GE12, in the form of the Pakatan Rakyat, or People’s Pact.

Nevertheless, we see here a clear segregation of opposition parties by ethnicity. The Democratic Action Party (DAP, a social democratic party) almost always competed against the MCA or Gerakan—the former is a Chinese party, and the latter is multiethnic but has a largerly Chinese following. The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS, an Islamist party) almost always competed against UMNO, which is a Malay party, and Malays are by law Muslims. The People’s Justice Party (PKR, a party whose predecessor was founded by Anwar Ibrahim) was the only party that doesn’t fit this pattern, competing against both UMNO and MCA.

We can also examine the outcomes of these contests.

BN Victories, GE12, Peninsular Malaysia Only

Lots to conclude from this, but some things to highlight. (1) MCA and Gerakan did really poorly against the DAP and PKR, but not against PAS, although there are only a couple such elections because of the ethnic segregation mentioned above. (2) UMNO won the majority of contests against PAS and PKR. If you break that finding down further, you will learn that this masks some big differences across the states: UMNO did extremely well in Johor (its historic base), really poorly in the Northeast (the historic base of PAS). I have written more on that here (ungated version here).

In the next preview post, I will discuss why I am confining all of these analyses to Peninsular Malaysia.