Introduction: Hung parliament, coalition government and the rise of the Islamists – Malaysia after the 2022 election

Abstract

Malaysia’s 15th General Election (GE15) on 19 November 2022 produced a 19-party coalition government led by Anwar Ibrahim, which now controls a two-third parliamentary majority. This government comprises four coalitions: Anwar’s Alliance of Hope (Pakatan Harapan, PH), the once dominant National Front (Barisan Nasional, BN), Sarawak Parties Alliance (Gabungan Parti Sarawak, GPS) with and Sabah People’s Alliance (Gabungan Rakyat Sabah, GRS), which have, respectively, four, four, four and three parties in the Federal Parliament. The coalition also has four standalone parties, Heritage Party (Parti Warisan, Warisan), the youth-based Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (MUDA) and two regional parties. GE15 itself has at least four significant implications. First, it led to the fourth peaceful transfer of power since the end of BN’s 61-year rule in 2018, such that Malaysia technically passes Huntington’s test of ‘two consecutive turnovers’ even though her democracy is far from consolidated. Second, it produced a hung parliament right after the election, the first time at the federal level. A hung parliament first emerged after the ‘Sheraton Move’, described in detail elsewhere in this issue, in February 2020, which saw the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Parti Bersatu Pribumi Malaysia, PPBM) leaving PH and installing its president Muhyiddin Yassin as the new Prime Minister. Third, it recorded an unprecedented rise of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) which became the largest single party in Parliament with 19% of seats. Driven by both PAS and Bersatu, the National Alliance (Perikatan Nasional, PN) is now the sole Opposition with one-third of seats. Fourth, only three of Malaysia’s 13 states had their elections concurrently, ending the conventional vertical and horizontal simultaneity in the election calendar, indicating the decoupling of federal-state politics since 2018. In his opinion piece, Kian-Ming Ong, political scientist at Taylor’s University and exparliamentarian of the Democratic Action Party (DAP), welcomes the intrigues Malaysia’s increasingly competitive and constantly evolving political landscape bring to comparative researchers in at least three areas: ethnically divided societies, democratic change and electoral reform in authoritarian regimes and the dynamics of electoral coalitions.