Underlying forces that collapsed Pakatan Harapan

Professor James Chin (Monash University) is the Director of the Asia Institute Tasmania at the University of Tasmania and Senior Fellow at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia. He writes for Channel News Asia (CNA):

Three Underlying Forces Fuelled Malaysia’s Recent Political Crisis:

We are familiar with the first two, so I'll be brief here with them, namely:

THE FIRST UNDERLYING FORCE: A STRONG UMNO-PAS PACT

All through the jostling over the past week, the one pact that held firm amid the collapse of the PH and splits within Anwar Ibrahim’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat and Dr Mahathir’s Bersatu was that iron-clad agreement between UMNO and PAS that they would vote as a bloc.

THE SECOND UNDERLYING FORCE: THE NEW NARRATIVE

what 'dignity' when they are so fearful of competing with others?

Professor Zainal Kling remarked - without proof - that the Malays, royalties and Islam have been insulted by certain quarters, claiming non-Malays have taken advantage of the citizenship status given to them, and adding that Malaysia belonged to the Malays

Mahathir cited the British colonial era, when foreign workers were brought in as the country’s workforce.

The Malay rulers at the time, said Dr Mahathir, thought the foreigners would return home to their respective countries after completing their work.

“It was not the case after the foreigners became complacent and decided to stay in the country.

“Regardless of whether we like it or not, we allowed them (foreigners) to stay in the country.”* his foreigners are the non-Malay Malaysians
(that's how he views Chinese and Indian Malaysians)

The new and winning narrative the UMNO-PAS pact used so successfully against PH was remarkably simple: The Malays are now under threat because the second largest party in PH, the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), is threatening the Malay agenda.

DAP has been rolling back the “special rights” given to the Malays, according to UMNO and PAS politicians.

Examples of this include the appointment of non-Malays to important positions widely regarded as those that should be reserved for Malay political leaders. These include the Finance Minister (Lim Guan Eng), Chief Justice of Malaysia (Richard Malanjum) and the Attorney-General (Tommy Thomas). Mr Thomas and Mr Lim were also the first minorities to assume those posts in 55 and 44 years respectively.

The main topic in this post if about:

THE THIRD UNDERLYING FORCE: THE SPLIT BETWEEN PKR AND BERSATU

... perhaps the most obvious one: The non-stop shadow-boxing between Dr Mahathir’s and Anwar’s supporters. Anwar’s supporters initially sang praises about Dr Mahathir but when Dr Mahathir announced that he needed “more time” to “clean up the mess” and may not hand power to Anwar in May 2020, the mood soured.

Suddenly Mahathir was painted as someone who had secretly planned to stay the full term all along and had taken the entire PH for a ride.

It did not help that the wider PH government was dysfunctional. Many of its ministers never held any prior high government office and did not know how to control the civil service, which was key to the public delivery of services.

More importantly, each component party did their own thing. Ministers contradicted each other, the most famous example, being the flying national car project, which was hotly debated.

Was it any wonder that a political crisis was waiting to happen?

The trigger was the PH presidential Council meeting on Friday. Many of Mahathir supporters were extremely unhappy that DAP and Amanah had exerted pressure on Dr Mahathir to name a firm date on handing power to Anwar.

Although the meeting ended with the decision to let Dr Mahathir select the date after November this year, his supporters were incensed, insisting that it was time to reset the entire PH so that no one could challenge Mahathir anymore, especially the “Chinese” DAP.

This was the trigger point. The big idea was to create a new coalition with stronger Malay presence.

It was this restless Malay polity that triggered the crisis. The end result is that we may have an all-Malay government in Malaysia.

Many Malaysians do not realise that for the first time since independence, there is no non-Malay party at the core of this government.

Bersatu, UMNO and PAS are all Malay-centric parties and all three do not have a single non-Muslim MP.
This stands in huge contrast to six decades of UMNO rule, where the three core parties in the ruling BN coalition were UMNO (representing the Malay/Muslim), the Malaysian Chinese Association (representing the Chinese) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (representing the Indians).

While I do not doubt Muhyiddin will appoint non-Malays to his cabinet, in reality, it is unclear if non-Malay representatives, likely to come from the MCA and MIC, will wield any influence.

This goes against the dream of the nation’s founders for Malaysia to become a successful experiment in multi-culturalism.