Four Elections and a Transition in Malaysia

• In Event: Language Politics in State- and Nation-building

Abstract

Malaysia’s dominant coalition Barisan Nasional (BN) unexpectedly lost the 2018 general election, bringing about the first transition in the country’s seventy-year independent history. Numerous “hot-takes” have been offered to explain this apparent democratization milestone. Contrary to those claims, we argue that no unified explanation is possible, because the election is better conceived of as four separate contests in four separate electoral arenas, each of which have a distinct electoral dynamic and vision of what constitutes the “New Malaysia”.

Those arenas are as follows: The East Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak are driven by clientelistic practices where an elite split pulled voters away from the BN. The states of Terengganu and Kelantan are dominated by the Islamist party PAS which maintains a distinct Islamist agenda incompatible with the new government. Peninsular districts in which ethnic minorities comprise greater than 40% of the electorate have views consistent with the modernization theory and voted heavily against the BN. The remaining peninsular districts, in which ethnic Malays dominate, continued to support the BN in large numbers, though the defection of Mahathir Mohamad and other former BN elite allowed the opposition to pull enough votes to secure some seats.

Discerning between these four electoral arenas is important for correctly explaining the transition. More importantly, it has fundamental implications for the nation building process in Malaysia. While substantial portions of all four arenas voted for change – and for a “Malaysia Baru” (New Malaysia) – what constitutes that new Malaysia varies across the arenas. As the position of Islam is essentially cemented and too politically sensitive to challenge, contestation shifts to the position of language as a marker of national identity; specifically, whether the Malay language will remain the cornerstone of the national identity or whether English and Chinese will play a greater role in the public domain, thereby increasing the cosmopolitan dimension of Malaysia’s national identity. This paper establishes Malaysia’s four electoral arenas, enumerates their differentiating attributes, and examines the implications for our understanding of the democratic transition and the ongoing nation building process.

Authors

• Kai Ostwald, University of British Columbia

• Steven Matthew Oliver, Yale-NUS College