Politics
Understanding Malaysia’s political landscape through explainers, analysis and forecasts.
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Borneo decides the government only while the peninsula stays split
Peninsular parties hold enough seats to govern without Sabah and Sarawak, and the results in Johor and Negeri Sembilan showed what happens when they stop competing against each other.
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MCA won back seats, not Chinese voters
MCA won eight seats in Johor this year. Chinese voters hardly came back. Malay voters won the seats for it.
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BN does not need PN to win Melaka
In 2021 BN won three seats in every four with 38% of the vote, because Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional split the rest between them.
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PAS is the largest Malay bloc. Why give up the premiership?
Its delegates voted last September for PAS to lead the opposition coalition and name a prime minister from its own ranks. It has spent the year handing positions to other people.
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Indian voters are spread too thin to decide a seat
There are 165 seats in the peninsula. Indian voters are the biggest group in none of them.
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PKR has almost no Malay voters left
Four in ten Malay voters backed PKR for fourteen years. Now it is one in twenty. It keeps its Malay seats because BN and PN are split.
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DAP is voting on a problem it does not have
More than 4,000 delegates meet on Aug 16 to decide whether the party stays in government. In Johor’s most Chinese neighbourhoods, its share of the vote went up this year.
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Anwar gains nothing by calling an election now
He does not have to call an election until December 2027. Every month he waits helps the economy reach people and helps his rivals get ready
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BN would be in second place in any pact with PN
Barisan won 23 of the peninsula’s 165 seats in 2022. Perikatan won 71, and finished ahead of Barisan in 116 of the 165. A seat pact would hand Perikatan all 71 before talks begin.
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The Malay unity deal costs neither party a seat it holds
In Negeri Sembilan, Perikatan Nasional handed over seats it has never won, in a state Barisan Nasional already runs.
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Politicians decide what Tabung Haji pays its savers
The fund holds RM91 billion for 10 million people, and in 2017 it promised them more than it had earned.
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Sabah was promised RM1.5 billion. Only RM600 million was ever legal to pay.
The rest was announced in May. But no order exists to release it, and the order that does exist holds Sabah at RM600 million a year until 2029.