The Hollow Crown

From Rich Huang's FB Post:

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This lady writes well. People blame Anwar and the DAP, thinking a new leader or party will solve our problems. The simple fact is that coalition governments are weak.

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Betty Teh

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The Hollow Crown

Why Malaysia’s Prime Minister Is a Statesman Abroad and a Caretaker at Home

by Betty Teh
4 December 2025

Watch Anwar Ibrahim on the ASEAN stage or at the UN: fluent, fearless, a regional elder statesman lecturing superpowers on Gaza or moderation in Islam. At home, the same man struggles to pass a budget without begging 40 MPs in five separate WhatsApp groups, cannot fire a single underperforming minister, and spends half his week flying to Kuching or Kota Kinabalu to prevent the government from collapsing before Friday prayers.

This is not a contradiction in personality. The difference is not character; it is structural.
It is the logical consequence of coalition mathematics.
Coalition politics has hollowed out the premiership, turning what was once the federation’s most authoritative office into a ceremonial shell, dependent on the whims of veto players who prioritize survival over strategy.

This transformation, cemented since the 2018 electoral fracture, marks the end of the strongman era. From Tunku Abdul Rahman to Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysian prime ministers wielded near absolute control within their coalitions, backed by supermajorities that allowed decisive action. Today, the job is a perpetual negotiation. The Prime Minister is no longer the architect of national destiny; he is a coalition manager, juggling incompatible agendas from partners who view governance as a zero sum extraction game.

A Malaysian Prime Minister today is not a leader. He is a coalition manager, a professional negotiator, and most days a well dressed hostage.

The asymmetry is starkest in foreign policy versus domestic affairs. Abroad, Anwar operates in a vacuum of vetoes. No UMNO warlord demands concessions midspeech at the World Economic Forum. No GPS chief texts “remember MA63” during a bilateral with Indonesia. No DAP conservative threatens to bolt over a line on Palestine. The international arena allows him to project Malaysia’s intent unfiltered a moderate Muslim democracy punching above its weight. It is theater without scriptwriters, where he can afford moral clarity because the stakes are symbolic, not existential.

At home, every utterance is prevetted by a cabinet that resembles a fragile Jenga tower. The “unity government” 19 parties stitched together post GE15 is less an administration than a non aggression pact. Anwar’s real daily brief is not the economy or security; it is keeping the pieces from scattering. UMNO’s court cluster faction, facing 47 graft charges in Zahid Hamidi’s case alone, demands judicial slowdowns as coalition dues. Borneo blocs (GPS and GRS) extract billions in infrastructure pork and MA63 tweaks, vetoing any centralizing reform that smells of peninsula dominance. DAP pushes secular multiracialism, clashing with PAS echoes in PN’s opposition shadow. PKR’s internal factionalism adds another layer of entropy.

The result? Domestic policy is a graveyard of intent. A strong government derives power from clarity of purpose: “This is our mandate; this is the timeline.” Coalitions, by nature, erode that. In Malaysia’s variant, there is no shared philosophical core only arithmetic. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that binds the alliance is a minimalist contract, heavy on vague “stability” pledges and light on actionable reforms. Term limits for the premiership? Buried, lest it offend Anwar’s own longevity.

Separating the Attorney General from the Public Prosecutor? Stalled, to avoid accelerating trials that could topple UMNO partners. Ending race based quotas? Whispered in private, abandoned in public to placate Malay nationalists.

Survival supplants strategy. The Prime Minister cannot fire an incompetent minister without risking a defection cascade. He cannot enforce fiscal discipline if it cuts Borneo’s subsidies. He cannot advance climate policy if it threatens Sarawak’s oil interests. Even anti corruption, once PH’s rallying cry, is neutered: high profile cases crawl at glacial pace, a tacit toll for BN’s 30 seats. This is not governance; it is arbitrage, where every decision is priced in parliamentary votes.

Compare this to coalitions that function. Australia’s Liberal National pact succeeds because both parties share a centre right worldview: free markets, rural priorities, conservative values. Their agreements are public, detailed, and enforceable, allowing the Prime Minister to lead without daily renegotiation. Germany’s traffic light coalitions (SPD-Greens-FDP) produce 200 page contracts that preresolve disputes, anchoring the Chancellor’s authority in shared progressive intent. Japan’s LDP dominated alliances marginalize junior partners, preserving executive primacy.

Malaysia’s model is the inverse: a patchwork of ideological antagonists. PAS demands hudud expansions; DAP insists on secular education. UMNO clings to Bumiputera patronage; PKR flirts with reformist populism. Borneo blocs prioritize regional autonomy, indifferent to peninsula culture wars. There is no Venn diagram overlap only a fragile equilibrium where offending one partner risks the whole. This breeds paralysis: budgets balloon with targeted allocations to buy loyalty, reforms vanish into endless “technical committees,” and long term planning shrinks to five day survival horizons.

Coalition works only when parties share a similar ideology. Malaysia’s coalitions are marriages of convenience, not principle.

The political science term for this is “veto player proliferation.” Each coalition fragment becomes a gatekeeper, diluting executive intent until only the lowest common denominator remains: don’t collapse.

Anwar’s government, holding 148 seats but bleeding support in state polls, exemplifies this. Sabah’s recent hung assembly: GRS scraping 29 seats, Warisan surging to 25 mirrors the federal rot, with confidence and supply pacts buying time but delivering no transformation.

The consequences cascade. Voter cynicism spikes turnout dipped to 61 percent in Sabah, foreshadowing GE16 apathy. Institutional decay accelerates: gerrymandering persists, political financing stays opaque, judicial independence remains aspirational. Economic growth sputters under policy inconsistency; foreign investors eye Indonesia’s decisiveness instead.

If this continues, no PM in Malaysia will ever again have the power to push reforms. Not that it has happened even previously but now for real the PM has no authority to discipline ministers, has no freedom to fire incompetence, has no space to create longterm policies, no courage to offend a partner nor the autonomy to govern alone. Because all of these require intent and intent dies in a coalition.

Malaysia no longer elects Prime Ministers. We elect negotiators. We do not elect governments. Eventually it is assembled like IKEA furniture, but with the wrong screws, missing parts and an instruction manual written by 5 different authors. Anwar knows this. His partners know this. 

The rakyat must internalize it: we have traded statesmen for caretakers, vision for vigilance. The premiership, once a throne, is now a tightrope. And in Malaysia’s endless balancing act, the only sure winner is inertia.