Twin coalition politics in Malaysia since 2008: a path dependent framing and analysis.

• Author: SaraVanamuttu, Johan
• Position: Report

The General Election of 8 March 2008 significantly altered the political parameters of electoral politics and constituted or at least contributed to a reconfiguration of the political landscape in Malaysia. (2) In terms of electoral politics, it may be suggested that March 8 created a de facto and perhaps a de jure two-party (or two-coalition) system if one considers both the parliamentary and state levels of governance.

The election resulted in the ruling National Front (Barisan Nasional or BN) government losing its two-thirds share of seats in the Parliament which it had held since independence in 1957. The opposition parties, later formalized as the People's Alliance (Pakatan Rakyat or Pakatan for short), won a total of 82 out of the 222 contested seats. The BN barely won 50 per cent of the 7.9 million ballots cast, demonstrating that the electorate was virtually split down the middle. Furthermore, five state governments fell to the opposition, an unprecedented event in Malaysian politics. There is thus a case to be made that the BN had lost is "first-mover advantage" (3) in establishing and capitalizing on consociational institutional arrangements which has served it well in the past. Moreover, the "increasing returns" (4) yielded from these arrangements in electoral terms tended to taper off by the time of the 2008 general election for a variety of reasons which this essay will explore.

Using path dependence as a framework, this paper argues that the political moment of 8 March which created an incipient two-party system in Malaysia was reinforced by an unprecedented number of subsequent by-elections. The results of these by-elections indicate that the momentum, and the factors that explain the electoral outcome, continue to animate Malaysian electoral politics. Factors driving Malaysia's new politics are both a function of political transformations which arguably began in the 1980s and certainly after former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's dismissal and incarceration in 1998. While ethnicity remains a crucial variable in Malaysian politics, cross-ethnic voting represents the driver of Malaysia's new politics. Citizens across the board are now more informed of universal issues such as corruption and minority rights and the opposition alliance has been able to capitalize on these new sensibilities and awareness by offering an alternative political institutional format of politics to that of the ruling coalition. Going beyond the older consociational arrangements of ethnic power sharing, the Pakatan has introduced political mobilization processes and institutions which aim to provide good governance, economic welfare and human rights in the tradition of delivering "political goods". (5)

Several important points should be made about considering March 2008 as an historical rupture and the beginnings of a new trajectory of path dependence in Malaysian politics. It is important to note that the event may not be of the order of a "critical juncture" of the kind alluded to by Collier and Collier, (6) namely one that produces a distinctly new legacy by ending an old one, such as demolishing an ancien regime. Indeed there are important continuities in Malaysian politics after the 2008 general election. Moreover, the critical junctures identified by the Colliers in Latin America spanned periods of nine to twenty-three years, (7) while March 2008 was but a decade after the antecedent event of Reformasi in 1998, which was followed by the 1999 general election. My argument is that the new path dependent development which was created in Malaysian electoral politics has valourized electoral democracy, rather than changing the political system of the country. Malaysian politics may have changed, perhaps not as radically, but much depends on further developments in the years following 2008.

An important theoretical point was raised by O'Shannassy in 2009 in this journal. He sought to answer the question of whether 8 March represented a "truly progressive moment", that would be "long-term and structural" or instead was nothing more than "a short-term, regressive, 'restorative' moment". (8) Invoking Gramsci, O'Shannasy seemed to suggest that although the jury was still out on the question, the 8 March election revealed certain transformative elements in national politics. My contention is that such a Gramscian analysis probably understates significant political developments in the electoral sphere which are closer to a reformist turn rather than an "organic" change (9) in Malaysian politics. We will return to this question in the conclusion.

The March 2008 Election Outcome

Parliament and state assemblies, with the exception of Sarawak, were dissolved on 13 February 2008. The Election Commission called for nominations on 24 February for the 12th General Election of Malaysia to be held on 8 March 2008. An unusually long thirteen days were given for campaigning and some 222 parliamentary seats were in contention along with 505 state seats. (10) The outcome of the general election was dubbed as a "political tsunami" or "a perfect storm". (11) Political analyst Khoo Boo Teik strikes a more cautious note, however: "The metaphors may be excessive. A true tsunami, say, would have swept the BN out of office. A perfect storm would not have bypassed Sabah and Sarawak." (12) Nevertheless, the three major ethnic communities--Malays, Chinese and Indians--and almost all the Peninsular states (13) swung decisively in the direction of opposition parties as shown in Table 1 and deprived the ruling coalition of its all-important two-thirds majority in parliament, thus dealing a heavy blow to its ethnic power-sharing formula.

It is now recognized that in terms of enduring political outcomes, the 8 March election has surpassed the 1969 watershed general election which triggered the outbreak of riots in Kuala Lumpur on 13 May. (14) The 2008 opposition election rallies throughout the campaign period was oddly reminiscent of May 1969, but perhaps eclipsing the 1969 campaign by the sheer numbers that attended such rallies throughout the country. (15) For instance, one rally in Penang was attended by 50,000 people, an unprecedented turnout in the history of Malaysian electoral politics. (16)

What then are the salient features of the 2008 election? The BN government arguably suffered its worst defeat in history with a loss of its two-thirds majority of seats. As shown in Table 2, the BN government also just about lost the popular vote in Peninsular Malaysia including the loss of four state governments while one remained in opposition hands. There was a vote swing away from the BN government in every state on the Peninsula. Table 3, based on estimates, shows that Chinese and Indian voters clearly preferred the opposition parties, while Malays still had a preference, but a reduced one, for the BN parties. The most significant swing came from Indians, who evidently abandoned the ethnically constituted Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). Chinese voters also swung palpably in the direction of ostensibly non-Chinese parties, dealing the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) its poorest showing since 1969.

Most significantly, Malaysia edged towards a formal parliamentary two-party system and in fact instituted a two-party system at the state-level of governance. The following are some of the most salient outcomes of the 8 March elections. First, the BN received barely half (50.1 per cent) of the 7.9 million ballots cast nationwide and lost the popular vote on the Peninsula, garnering only 49 per cent of the ballots. Second, the BN lost its two-thirds majority in parliament, winning 140 federal seats and 307 state seats, with the opposition taking 82 and 198 respectively. Third, the BN lost the state governments of Selangor, Penang, Perak and Kedah, while Kelantan remained in opposition hands (the BN's worst performances were in 1959 and 1999 when it failed to capture two state governments, Kelantan and Terengganu respectively).

One of the more significant aspects of the 2008 election in contrast to previous general elections was the comprehensive vote swing of all major ethnic communities away from the BN parties. Political scientist Ong Kian Ming has estimated that some 30-35 per cent of non-Malay voters swung to the opposition parties, compared with the popular vote in the previous election of 2004. Although the overall corresponding swing for Malays was only about 5 per cent, Ong has argued that:

It is important to highlight that these vote swings are not uniformly distributed. For example, the Malay vote swing in the West Coast states, especially in Penang, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur was higher than the estimated 5% and was closer to 10% or even higher in certain constituencies like Balik Pulau, Gombak and Lembah Pantai. It would not have been possible for the opposition, PKR in these cases, to win without a sizeable swing in the Malay vote. (18) Nationwide, in mixed seats where the electorate formed 40 to 60 per cent of Malay voters, the BN won 28 seats and the opposition 26 seats, demonstrating that Pakatan had become a credible contender to the BN and was emulating BN's model of electoral success by adopting coalitional and consociational strategies. (19) It could well be argued that cross-ethnic voting accounted for a significant number of victories of the Pakatan and, had the pattern of cross-ethnic voting which occurred in Kelang Valley been replicated in states like Pahang, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan and Johor, the BN government might have been toppled on 8 March. (20)

A Twin-Coalition Party System?

The rupture of the old political trajectory of politics and my positing of a new path dependence rests on the fact that Malaysia may have become a de jure two-party system at the state-level due to the stunning victories of the Pakatan coalition of forces as shown in Figure 1. In fact, some analysts have pointed out that the sixth...