Coalitions in Collision: Malaysia's 13th General Elections 9789814620659

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Reproduced from Coalitions in Collision: Malaysia's 13th General Elections, edited by Johan Saravanamuttu, Lee Hock Guan and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is notiinfringed. Foreword No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual chapters are available at

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Coalitions in Collision

The Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) is an independent publishing house founded in January 2000 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The SIRD list focuses on Malaysian and Southeast Asian studies, economics, gender studies, social sciences, politics and international relations. Our books address the scholarly communities, students, the NGO and development communities, policymakers, activists and the wider public. SIRD also distributes titles (via its sister organisation, GB Gerakbudaya Enterprise Sdn Bhd) published by scholarly and institutional presses, NGOs and other independent publishers. We also organise seminars, forums and group discussions. All these, we believe, are conducive to the development and consolidation of the notions of civil liberty and democracy. ◆◆◆◆◆

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

Foreword iii

Edited by

Johan Saravanamuttu Lee Hock Guan Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman

Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, Malaysia

Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

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Coalitions in Collision

Copyright © 2015 Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) & Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) First published in Malaysia in 2015 by: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre No. 2, Jalan Bukit 11/2, 46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia Email: [email protected] Website: www.gerakbudaya.com ISBN: 978-967-0630-55-7 (SIRD pbk.) for exclusive distribution in Malaysia and non-exclusive distribution outside Malaysia and Singapore Co-published in Singapore in 2015 by: ISEAS Publishing Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir Panjang, Singapore 119614 Email: [email protected] Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg ISBN: 978-981-4620-40-6 (ISEAS Publishing pbk.) for exclusive distribution in Singapore and non-exclusive distribution outside Malaysia and Singapore. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Coalitions in Collision: Malaysia’s 13th General Election / editors: Johan Saravanamuttu, Lee Hock Guan, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman. 1. Malaysia. Parlimen. Dewan Rakyat–Elections, 2013. 2. Elections–Malaysia. 3. Malaysia–Politicsand government–21stcentury. I. Saravanamuttu, Johan. II. Lee, Hock Guan. III. Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman. IV. Title: Malaysia’s 13th General Elections JQ1062 A95C652 2015

ISBN 978-981-4620-40-6 (soft cover) ISBN 978-981-4620-65-9 (e-book, PDF)

Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Coalitions in Collision: Malaysia’s 13th General Election / edited by Johan Saravanamuttu, Lee Hock Guan, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman. ISBN: 978-967-0630-55-7 1. Elections–Malaysia 2. Political parties–Malaysia 3. Malaysia–Politics and government. I. Johan Saravanamuttu. II. Lee, Hock Guan. III Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman. 324.9595 Typeset in Minion Pro by Janice Cheong Cover design by Fahmi Reza Printed by Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd 2 Jalan Meranti Permai 1 Meranti Permai Industrial Park Batu 15, Jalan Puchong 47100 Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia

Foreword v

Contents

Foreword Ooi Kee Beng vii Acknowledgements xi About the Contributors xiii Chapter 1 Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact



on Outcomes



Johan Saravanamuttu, Lee Hock Guan and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman

Chapter 2 New Politics or Old Politics in New Clothing?





in GE13



Johan Saravanamuttu

Chapter 4 Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

37

63

Lee Hock Guan

Chapter 5 The Political Economy of FELDA Seats:



UMNO’s Malay Rural Fortress in GE13



Khor Yu Leng

Chapter 6 Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13



19

Yang Razali Kassim

Chapter 3 Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse



1

Maznah Mohamad v

91

123

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Coalitions in Collision

Chapter 7 Watchdogs or Lapdogs? Monitoring Malaysia’s Media Coverage of GE13



Tessa J. Houghton and Zaharom Nain

Chapter 8 The ‘Pek Moh’ Factor and the Sarawak



Parliamentary Seats



James Chin

Chapter 9 The Appeal and Future of the ‘Borneo Agenda’ in Sabah



181

199

Arnold Puyok

Chapter 10 The Case of Titiwangsa: Changing Features of



Election Campaigns?



Choong Pui Yee

Chapter 11 Terengganu and Kelantan: The Separation and



Convergence of Blurred Identities



Afif bin Pasuni

Chapter 12 A Jewel in the Barisan Nasional Crown: An Electoral Analysis of Four Parliamentary Seats in Johor



159

221

235

249

Mustafa Izzuddin

Chapter 13 Whither Malaysia: Re-thinking the Future of



Malaysian Politics



Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman

Index

279

297

Foreword vii

Foreword

Malaysia changes hesitantly with the region. Since the 1997–98 global financial crisis, countries in Southeast Asian have been experiencing what without exaggeration can be called a deep restructuring. At the time of writing this, Indonesia has just completed its presidential election peacefully and is awaiting the final results. For a country ruled for three decades by a dictatorship, the transition to democracy has been impressive indeed and, at the moment, the country seems to be moving into its next stage of democratic development. In Singapore, the 2011 polls saw more opposition members elected into the national Parliament than had been the case in decades. In Thailand, the coup of May 2014 is seen by many as a more or less reluctant reboot by the military of the country’s democratising process, being necessitated by a stubborn deadlock that was threatening to derail the country’s economic development. In Myanmar, military leaders recently turned civilian and decided to jumpstart the country’s stalled economy through a series of democratic reforms. Changes have been impressive. Since 2011 hundreds of political prisoners have been released, media censorship has been greatly relaxed and freedom of assembly allowed; and the country has received enormous amounts of foreign direct investments. A general election involving all parties is planned for 2015. Vietnam, in turn, has continued opening up its command economy to the world, following in the footsteps of China, its northern CommunistParty-led neighbour, and has become a major player in regional development. (The Philippines is due in 2016 to hold its sixth presidential election since 1986, when President Ferdinand Marcos was deposed.)

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The changes since 1998 have meaningfully been happening alongside these countries’ heightened regional ambitions in the form of successive ASEAN integration and wide-ranging trading pacts involving big powers, old and new. These broader dynamics provide a necessary backdrop for many positive developments in Southeast Asia; and for many, the inclusion in ASEAN of Cambodia in 1999, after that country had gained political stability, marked the completion of the organisation’s geographical reach. In Malaysia, cries of ‘Reformasi’, echoing those in Indonesia, were also heard in 1998 following the dismissal as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister of Anwar Ibrahim. Since then, much has taken place to redraw the political map of Malaysia. An influential new political party – soon titled Partai KeAdilan Rakyat (PKR) – was started to champion Anwar; long-time Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad retired in October 2003; reform agendas became the norm in Malaysia’s political rhetoric starting with Mahathir’s successor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and followed by Najib Razak; and norm-setting civil society movements came to play a central role in public discourses. These developments also gave birth to organisations that are better known as uncivil society movements which have, in retaliation to rapid social changes, resorted to religious and ethnic provocations to stem the tide. Most significantly, Malaysia’s political structure has totally changed in the last decade. The general election held on 8 May 2008 saw opposition parties gaining control of five (out of 13) states. Pakatan Rakyat, the coalition that these parties soon formed, not only managed to oppose the ruling parties at the federal level; it has survived and remains a strong challenge to the federal government. Although this coalition lost one state through defections in 2009, and another in the 13th general election in 2013, it managed nevertheless to retain the remaining three with stronger majorities. A new and resolute pattern has therefore emerged in Malaysia, where East Malaysian states are now much more prominent due to the ruling coalition’s dependence on them for electoral support at the federal level; where civil society, fuelled by countless new channels of information and platforms for discussion, actively contributes to political developments; where a change in federal government is seriously entertained by many Malaysians; where two Malay-led coalitions contend with each other on all

Foreword ix

fronts; and where governance issues vie with racial and religious issues to determine the country’s future. The main dynamics behind regional changes certainly do vary from country to country. Some, such as the advent of social media and the Internet in general, are decidedly common ones. Others are more localised in character. In Malaysia, the breakdown of information control by central authorities, along with the urbanisation of the population, lies behind many of the changes. These changes have now led to the emergence of a two-party – more correctly, two-coalition – system, where there once was one gigantic coalition whose effective modus operandi was to absorb small parties into its sphere of consensus – and compliance. In short, the articles in this volume tell different sides of this longer process of change, as mirrored in the 2013 general election. It was in mid-2013 that discussions between researchers from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the National Technological University (NTU) led to this joint book project between two of Singapore’s major research institutes doing Malaysia studies. The end product provides a most adequate understanding of the present state of political affairs in Malaysia.

Ooi Kee Beng Deputy Director, ISEAS 11 July 2014

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Foreword xi

Acknowledgements This book on Malaysia’s 13th general election was hatched months before the actual event on 5 May 2013. The hype which animated political analysts regarding its significance, especially after the watershed 12th general election of 2008, made the study of this election imperative for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. As editors, we got much encouragement from the ISEAS management, particularly deputy director Ooi Kee Beng, to press ahead with the project. The idea of a joint publication was initiated by Joseph Liow, Dean and Professor of Comparative and International Politics at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University and it was without doubt an excellent idea to pool together the academic resources and wide networking of RSIS and ISEAS to publish such a book. As co-editors we are greatly indebted to both research institutions for their support and encouragement and to ISEAS in particular for agreeing to the joint publication. We would like to thank Mr Ng Kok Kiong, head of ISEAS Publications, for his unstinting support of the project. Not to be forgotten is the ever-ready willingness of ‘Pak Chong’ of SIRD to undertake the joint publication of the book with ISEAS and to ensure its wide distribution in Malaysia. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank two anonymous evaluators of the manuscript for candid and helpful suggestions. Our final thanks go to our contributors who have been cajoled, prodded and harassed to deliver their chapters, but with little complaint. The usual caveat applies to the co-editors for any shortcomings and inadvertent errors. Johan Saravanamuttu Lee Hock Guan Mohd Nawab Mohd Osman

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About the Contributors

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About the Contributors

Afif bin Pasuni is Associate Research Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. James Chin is inaugural Director, Asia Institute Tasmania, University of Tasmania. He was previously Head, School of Arts & Social Sciences, Monash University, Malaysia Campus and Director of Governance Studies Programme, Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia. He is a leading commentator on Malaysian politics and has published extensively on Malaysia and the surrounding region. Choong Pui Yee is Senior Analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Tessa Houghton is Assistant Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia. Khor Yu Leng is Research Head of Southeast Asia at LMC International Ltd and was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. Lee Hock Guan is Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. Maznah Mohamad is Associate Professor in the Departments of Malay Studies and Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

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Coalitions in Collision

Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman is Assistant Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Mustafa Izzuddin is Research Associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. Arnold Puyok is Senior Lecturer of Political Science at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Kuching. Johan Saravanamuttu is Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. Yang Razali Kassim is Senior Fellow and Editor, RSIS Commentaries at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Zaharom Naim is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia.



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

1

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes Johan Saravanamuttu, Lee Hock Guan and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman

PREAMBLE Much has occurred on the political stage even within a year after the 13th general election (GE13) on 5 May 2013. In terms of electoral politics, there have been six by-elections at the time of writing; one resulted from the untimely death of Karpal Singh, the veteran Democratic Action Party (DAP) politician, and another from the death of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) Menteri Besar of Kedah. The by-elections were held in Kuala Besut (Terengganu state seat) on 24 July 2013; Sungai Limau (Kedah state seat) on 19 October 2013; Kajang (Selangor state seat) on 23 March 2014; Bukit Gelugor (Penang parliamentary seat) on 25 May 2014; Teluk Intan (Perak parliamentary seat) on 31 May 2014; and Pengkalan Kubor (Kelantan state seat) on 25 September 2014. Barisan Nasional (BN) retained the Kuala Besut seat, thus holding on to its thin two-seat majority in the state. This was to prove a little problematic later when the Menteri Besar of Terengganu and another member of the State Assembly announced that they had resigned from the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in mid-May 2014, although they soon recanted their intention to do so.1 The Kajang by-election was a complex move by the Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) to initially provide its leader Anwar Ibrahim with the opportunity to be in the Selangor state government,

1

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Coalitions in Collision

if not even to undertake leadership of the state. In the event, Wan Azizah Ismail, his wife, stood in his place and won the seat after Anwar was disqualified on technical grounds. Bukit Gelugor proved to be a ‘shoo-in’ for Karpal Singh’s son, Ramkarpal, who won the seat with a majority of 41,242 votes. All his three opponents lost their deposits.2 BN retained the Pengkalan Kubor seat with a larger majority when UMNO’s Mat Razi Mat Ali defeated his PAS opponent by 2,635 votes. Of the six by-elections, the Teluk Intan contest proved to be the most interesting. DAP took a major risk by choosing the 27-year-old Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, Lim Kit Siang’s political secretary, largely to test the waters of non-ethnic voting or, alternatively, for DAP to build up Malay support in a Chinese-majority but mixed constituency. Party strategists such as Tony Pua (who orchestrated the campaigning) and Ong Kian Ming were also trying to improve DAP’s image as a multiracial party. Dyana’s image of youth, her gender and good looks generated a political reflexivity quite beyond the party’s calculations, but certainly captured the national imagination. In the event, she lost to the veteran BN candidate Mah Siew Keong, Gerakan party’s president, by only 238 votes. Voter turnout of 67 per cent was inadequate to swing a sufficiently large number of Chinese voters to her favour and she lost a significant 15 per cent of Chinese votes to Mah. This could be explained by the lack of outstation voters, probably young, who did not – or could not – return to vote in this by-election. However, Dyana did pick up 3 per cent more Malay votes while losing 10 per cent of Indian votes.3 Also impacting on the political scene since the GE13 has been the resurrection of the issue of hudud (Islamic criminal law). This surfaced after PAS indicated its intention in April 2014 to implement hudud in Kelantan. PAS had planned to introduce an enabling legislation for hudud through Parliament, angling for support from UMNO members. However, the Islamic party retracted its move after the Najib government apparently approved the setting up of a national-level technical committee, with PAS’s involvement and participation, to study the long-term feasibility of hudud.4 This political development could have grave implications for the future of coalition and power-sharing politics in Malaysia as non-Muslim parties in both the ruling and Opposition coalitions are steadfastly opposed to the implementation of hudud.



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

3

From about February till late September of 2014, a series of events gave rise to what has been dubbed the Selangor Menteri Besar (MB) crisis. It all started when PKR sacked incumbent MB Khalid Ibrahim when he refused to relinquish his post as MB and the Opposition alliance, Pakatan Rakyat (PR), could not come to a unanimous decision to accept Wan Azizah Ismail as the new MB. Furthermore, the Sultan of Selangor rejected PKR’s first choice, Wan Azizah, who had won the Kajang by-election mentioned above. The crisis was eventually resolved on 23 September when the Sultan appointed PKR’s Azmin Ali as the MB. The crisis brought PR to near collapse, but the appointment of Azmin Ali to the post seems to have restored the status quo.5 We will now briefly discuss the character of Malaysia’s electoral system, its history, the amendments made to it, its biases, and the manner it has given great advantage to the ruling coalition. We give primary focus in this introduction to how the structure of the electoral system has affected the outcome of elections and to provide the reader with an overall frame for understanding the nuances of electoral results at various levels of contestation and on different terrains of political contests. Most importantly, we hope to shed light on how or whether a stable two-party or two-coalition system could eventually emerge in Malaysian electoral politics despite the constraints of the electoral system.

THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM Malaysia’s two-coalition electoral politics has remained in place since the watershed 2008 election when the ruling coalition BN lost its customary two-thirds control of Parliamentary seats. In the much-anticipated GE13, which is the subject of this book, there was the not unreasonable expectation that BN could slip even further. In the event, BN lost the popular vote to PR but still retained the reins of government. What seemed to be increasingly evident in Malaysia’s electoral politics was that the ruling coalition, which has helmed Malaysia for more than five decades, may have lost its ‘first mover advantage’ and was only able to hold on to power due in particular to the character of Malaysia’s electoral model – its first-past-the-post (FPTP) single member plurality system. This sort of system has given rise, in the parlance of electoral studies, to ‘manufactured majorities’, i.e. electoral outcomes that confer a majority of seats (simple or large) to a single party or

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a coalition of parties which do not command a majority of the popular vote. As stated by Douglas Rae in his classic work on the political consequences of electoral laws, parliamentary majorities can be achieved in two basic ways: by winning a majority of the popular vote and receiving a proportionate number of seats or by winning less than a majority of the popular vote but receiving a bonus of seats as an artefact of the electoral system. The first type of majority is ‘earned’, while the second type is ‘manufactured’ (Rae, 1967: 74–7).6 Malaysia’s FPTP system, imbued as it is with a generous proportion of ‘rural weightage’, continues to favour BN, oftentimes generating large manufactured parliamentary majorities.7 This feature has led to a massive mal-apportionment of seats to constituencies that are the traditional strongholds of BN. While mal-apportionment is not inherently a function of the FPTP system, Malaysia is now famously among the worst culprits on this score, in the same league as Zambia and Ghana.8 Without doubt, the rural constituencies have favoured BN while the urban middle classes, now constituting a majority of voters in urban and semi-urban constituencies, have clearly shown a preference for the Opposition coalition. However, these constituencies do not command a majority of seats in Parliament. Some may argue that electoral politics has reached an impasse but, after two general elections, Malaysia’s two-coalition system seems to have gained some traction and, thanks to federalism, PR has considerable control of state governments in the Malay heartland and control of the more urbanised states of Selangor and Penang. Malaya’s electoral system as its stands today harks back to the 1954 report of the Constituency Delineation Commission for the Federation of Malaya, headed by Lord Merthyr (hereafter, Merthyr Commission), which recommended the delimitation of the 52 constituencies in Malaya’s first federal election of 1955.9 The report goes into considerable detail in making its recommendations, including the reasons for the adoption of the FPTP single-member constituency model and the reasons for the appropriate system of electoral representation that should be adopted in the then Malayan Federation. The issues of apportionment or distribution of voters and rural weightage and their rationale were considered along with the role and powers to be given to the Election Commission. The Reid Commission, which crafted the Malayan Constitution, largely adopted an electoral system



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

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based on that proposed by the Merthyr Commission, but it was no doubt also influenced by the conduct of the first election of the Members of the Legislative Council of the Federation of Malaya held in 1955. The smooth conduct of that election coupled with the detailed study by the Merthyr Commission no doubt gave assurance to the Reid Commission in their recommendations for the kind of electoral system to be established in an independent Federation of Malaya. The Commission first recommended that the 1955 legislature be dissolved by 1959 (under provisions of Article 154 of the new Constitution) so that elections for the newly constituted Malayan Parliament could be held between 1 January and 30 August 1959.10 The delimitation of constituencies was to be undertaken by an independent Election Commission of three members appointed by the Yang Di Pertuan Agong, with the authority and status equivalent to Supreme Court judges (Article 108).11 As they say, these decisions are now history. There have been many amendments to the manner in which Malaysian elections are now conducted and many of their earlier procedural features and constraints on executive control have been greatly eroded. Although significant changes were introduced, the simple plurality single-constituency FPTP model has remained intact. The first major change that was made to the electoral system occurred in the early 1960s. The first review of the electoral constituencies was initiated by the Election Commission (EC) soon after the 1959 general election, but was not well received by UMNO which had lost Malay ground to PAS, particularly in the east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu.12 The government then introduced the Constitutional (Amendment) Act 1962 ‘that not only annulled the revised constituencies but also removed the EC’s final power of decision on electoral constituencies and transferred it to a simple majority in parliament’ (Lim, 2005: 253). This meant that henceforth the EC could only submit reviews to the Prime Minister, who can make revisions before they are presented to Parliament. The 1962 Act also effectively annulled the EC’s new delineations and reverted them to the 1959 situation and virtually emasculated the EC’s impartial and independent role in constituency delimitations. The next round of amendments to the electoral system came in 1973. The context was the 1969 general election, which had sparked ethnic rioting

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on 13 May. Following the Alliance’s worst ever outcome, amendments to the constitution included proscribing discussion of ‘sensitive’ issues such as the position of the Malays and the rulers and the stopping of all public rallies during election campaigns. The Alliance then morphed into the current Barisan Nasional (BN) which brought many more parties into its fold on the Peninsula and in East Malaysia. The New Economic Policy (NEP), the affirmative action policy for Bumiputeras, was also subsequently proclaimed and implemented. Obviously it was not just the electoral system that was restructured; the very character of the political regime also changed. The material change that occurred with regard to electoral politics came in the form of the Constitutional (Amendment) Act (No. 2) of 1973. This act removed the EC’s power to apportion parliamentary constituencies among states and the number was now specified in Article 46 of the Federal Constitution, amendable by the government with a two-thirds majority vote. The 1973 Act also removed numeral or percentage limits to rural weightage with the wordings ‘a measure of weightage ought to be given to such (i.e. rural) constituencies’ (Lim, 2002: 111). Another change was the creation of the federal territory of Kuala Lumpur, whose non-Malay voters had probably caused the 1969 impasse in the Selangor state election which, some argue, sparked the KL riots. Another important change to the electoral system came in 1990. 13 An amendment to the Elections Act of 1958 enabled votes to be counted at polling stations; also, voters would vote according to their respective ‘streams’ (saluran), each of which was initially capped at a maximum of 700 voters but over time could exceed 1000 voters. The saluran system has turned out to be a positive rather than a negative development and allowed for a more efficient administration of voting. The fear of victimisation is more likely to be of importance in rural (rather than urban) constituencies, where streams are small in number and voting preferences can easily be identified. However, the sword cuts both ways as the Opposition could also use the fine data obtained from saluran votes to identify and target areas of support and weakness. At intervals of no less than eight years, a review of electoral boundaries or delimitations must be undertaken by the EC. The most extensive enhancement of constituencies occurred after the 1999 general election, from July 2002 till May 2003. Prior to this there had been



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

7

delimitation exercises in 1974, 1984 and 1994. Up until 2003, the EC’s own strictures allowed for disparities of 3.5 times between the smallest and largest constituencies. Controversy always revolved around the EC’s implementation of a highly liberal measure of rural weightage, with DAP voicing objections every time a delineation exercise was carried out. After the 1984 exercise, DAP leader Lim Kit Siang argued that rural weightage had nullified the one-man-one-vote principle and even MCA was unhappy with the extent of the de-amplification of the urban vote (Lim, 2005: 266–7). Alarm bells were also sounded by civil society groups prior to the 1999 GE, with the suqiu group of Chinese organisations calling for a return to the 15 per cent upper limit of discrepancy between constituencies (Loh and Saravanamuttu, 2003: 13, 284). Delineation exercises have evidently hugely benefited UMNO through rural weightage and a disproportionate number of Malay-majority constituencies, which today is arguably also an advantage to PAS. Interestingly, the disproportionate electoral power given to the Bumiputera communities of Sabah and Sarawak has also become salient and crucial to Malaysian politics. This could, of course, be justified as an affirmative action owing to the economic underdevelopment of the two states. However, as noted by analysts, federal electoral manipulations of these states also produce their own reflexive local impacts, intended or otherwise (Loh, 2005). As noted by Lim (2005: 270), the 1994 exercise in Sabah raised to 26 (out of 48) the previous 18 Bumiputera-majority constituencies, thus effectively placing control of the state government in the hands of the Muslim Bumiputera who comprised 40 per cent of the population. The Sabah re-delineations provided the structural basis for UMNO’s entry into Sabah state politics, and by 1999 it effectively captured state power via BN.14 In the more complex situation of Sarawak, it was allotted 62 state constituencies in the state-level exercise of 1995, but no group controls a majority of them, with Muslim-Melanau Bumiputera in effective power with about 28 per cent of the population while Dayaks (mainly divided between Iban and Bidayuh) comprise about 40 per cent of the population. According to Lim (2002: 271), delineations in Sarawak have clearly benefited the Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), UMNO’s electoral partner, giving it clout to resist Dayak electoral inroads. The outcome of the 1999 GE, which saw PAS making considerable inroads into UMNO territory, no doubt gave great impetus for the new

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Coalitions in Collision

delimitation exercise conducted from July 2002 to May 2003 which created 25 new Parliamentary seats and 53 new state seats. As the Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives) was about to approve the delineations on 8 April 2003, 44 opposition members walked out as a protest against both the proposal and BN’s alleged abuse of parliamentary procedure.15 DAP’s challenge against the delineations under the EC’s grievance process had earlier been rejected by the EC’s chairman on the grounds that ‘although [DAP] did submit a personal letter asking me to reconsider the State’s proposal on the delineation, [it] could not come up with a counter proposal which can grant a representation to be made and enable the EC to conduct [a] local inquiry to hear and consider appeals or objections’.16 Many of the new delimitations seem to ignore population trends. For example, Selangor, with a population of 4.19 million and an annual growth rate of 6.1 per cent since the 1991 census, received five new seats while Johor, with a population of 2.74 million and an annual growth rate of 2.6 per cent, was granted six new seats. The 2003 delimitation produced the highest population variations of any delimitation exercise. The Johor Bahru constituency had an electorate of approximately 90,000 voters while Lenggong (in Perak) had about 21,000 voters, a disparity of over 325 per cent. A study by Brown (2005) dissects the 2003 delineations, but also draws extensively from electoral data in the 1986, 1990, 1991 and 1999 exercises. Brown makes the argument that the most recent delineations could have actually reduced ethnic bias (i.e. Malay electoral strength) and given more advantage to particular geographical areas and distributions of ethnicity favourable to BN. This may have been BN’s manner of checking PAS’s advance in the 1999 GE, but it also had unintended consequences by 2008. Brown’s interesting thesis provides us with the basis for an important explanation of why the 2003 delineations may not have been structurally detrimental to the Opposition coalition, which had begun to adopt electoral strategies much like those of BN to gain cross-ethnic votes in mixed seats. Brown’s study shows that the FPTP electoral system had always favoured BN by conferring it large ‘manufactured majorities’ and thus until 2004 the ruling coalition had consistently won a two-thirds majority in Parliament despite capturing much less than that proportion of popular votes, as shown in Table 1.1. Extrapolating from Brown’s analysis, one could argue that the new delineations of 2003 were of definite benefit to BN up until 2004, when



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

9

it was able to capitalise on particularly the mixed seats in the impressive swing of popular votes to the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah) regime. However, by the same token, when the electoral swing went against Pak Lah in 2008, the vast majority of mixed seats went to the Opposition, thus explaining the ‘political tsunami’ of that election. In 2013, as the analyses in this book will show, the Opposition coalition has continued to hold sway in the mixed seats while losing some ground in the Malay constituencies and failing to gain a significant foothold in rural seats in East Malaysia. Table 1.1 shows the outcome of elections in terms of votes and seats won since 1959, illustrating synoptically how the ruling coalition has held sway over all general elections although it had lost the popular vote in 1969 and 2013 and came within a hair’s breath of losing it in 2008. Table 1.1: Percentage of Vote Share and Seats Won Alliance/BN vote share (%)

Alliance/BN seats won

Difference

1959

51.8

71.2

19.4

1964

58.4

85.6

27.2

1969

48.4

58.4

10.0

1974

60.7

87.7

27.0

1978

57.2

87.1

27.9

1982

60.5

85.7

25.2

1986

57.3

83.6

26.3

1990

53.4

70.6

17.2

1995

65.1

84.4

19.3

1999

56.5

76.2

19.7

2004

63.8

90.4

26.6

2008

50.1

63.1

13.0

2013

47.4

59.9

12.5

Source: Election Commission & Brown (2005: 5).

In this study of GE13, contributors will examine the emergence of new currents of electoral politics as well as ‘old’ currents of ethnically anchored politics, the stability of Malaysia’s ethnic power-sharing coalition politics, the impact of mal-apportionment on electoral outcomes, the significance of FELDA seats as a ‘vote bank’ of BN, the role of non-governmental

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Coalitions in Collision

organisations (NGOs), civil society and the social media in affecting the electoral outcome, the changing character of electoral campaigns, its socioeconomic implications as well the future trajectory of Malaysian politics. The book also examines the crucial electoral outcomes in Sabah and Sarawak and the issues animating East Malaysian politics, Malay voting behaviour in Kelantan and Terengganu and PR’s foray into Johor. Following this introduction, Yang Razali Kassim in Chapter 2 argues that GE13 has accelerated the evolution of Malaysian politics away from the traditional paradigm of race and ethnicity. Some argue that the idea of ‘new politics’ first emerged in the 1990s following the rupture in UMNO triggered by the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim that gave rise to the Reformasi movement. Consistent with this development, the trend of new politics arguably gathered momentum as manifested in subsequent general elections and seemingly climaxed in GE13. The road to the next general election to be held by 2018 may be a path strewn with uncertainty in Malaysia’s transition from old politics to new politics. Given its twists and turns, the question may also be posed as to whether the road ahead will indeed lead to a ‘new politics’ or to an ‘old politics’ in a new garb. Johan Saravanamuttu’s chapter then examines what he terms an ‘impasse’ in electoral politics because of BN’s failing consociational model of politics as evidenced in GE13. However, this failure applies more to the Peninsula than to East Malaysia where multi-ethnic coalition politics has held firm for BN. Moreover, while BN has lost much ground in urban and non-Malay terrains it has buttressed its rural Malay support in the Peninsula as well as Bumiputera strongholds in Sabah and Sarawak. Pakatan Rakyat, while winning the popular vote in GE13, has failed to capture a significant national share of Malay and Bumiputera support, advancing significantly only in its urban, non-Malay constituencies. The author observes through tracking the popular vote since 1995 that the Opposition continues on an upward trend in Peninsular states despite the dip for Kedah and Kelantan in 2013. Saravanamuttu shows through an analysis of ‘cross-ethnic voting’ of the 2008 and 2013 outcomes that a trajectory of success in mixed constituencies has continued for the Opposition. The author thus argues that GE13 has provided further evidence of path-dependent tracking of twin-coalition electoral politics. He suggests finally that the ruling coalition faces a ‘legitimacy crisis’ as its non-Malay Peninsula parties have begun to



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

11

lose their raison d’être, while the Opposition’s chief weakness remains its lack of capacity in East Malaysia. In Chapter 4, Lee Hock Guan focuses on the rise of the ethnic party system in Malaysia and how BN has strategically manipulated the opposition and the electoral system in order to remain in power. Since independence, BN has systematically racialised politics by ‘mobilising affective ethnic ties’, and by UMNO’s ‘playing up Malay-Muslim fear of the Chinese and nonMuslims and disbursing patronage through Malay preferential policies’. Voting choice in Malaysia thus becomes circumscribed by ethnicity. Nonethnic parties became marginalised and politics became dominated by ethnic parties where in Malaysia political conditions and circumstances created a dominant multi-ethnic party state. ‘Through constitutional amendments and personnel appointments, [BN] gradually exerts its control over the EC and through the latter manipulated the electoral system to shore up BN’s dominance.’ Gross inequities in its representative apportionment resulted as BN manipulated to make the most of the pattern of ethnic support for the coalition, especially UMNO’s ability to win a majority of Malay support and BN’s vote-pooling advantage. Until 2008 BN had won nearly all the mixed constituencies due to its vote-pooling advantage over the opposition. In 2008 and again in GE13, PR appears to have attained the upper hand over BN in terms of ethnic vote pooling. The end result is that BN has remained in power through ‘manufactured majorities’, that is, due to mal-apportionment that disproportionately benefited the coalition, in particular UMNO. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on an analysis of FELDA land schemes, serving as UMNO’s ‘Malay rural fortress’ and a captive vote bank of BN. There has been much allusion in the past to the role of FELDA in UMNO electoral politics, but scant empirical analysis of this crucial aspect of UMNO’s electoral strength. In Chapter 5 Khor Yu Leng takes us through FELDA’s history as a land scheme of household settlers, which has now morphed into a global venture with settlers being mere shareholders. Money politics has been crucial in ensuring that the 1.2 million voters in FELDA schemes have become a vote bank for UMNO. FELDA schemes are coterminous with some 54 rural parliamentary seats, and herein lies their importance to UMNO. In three case studies of FELDA seats in GE13, Khor shows that voter behaviour – through analysing voting streams (saluran) and drawing

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Coalitions in Collision

on interviews on the ground – that UMNO’s money politics held sway despite some erosion of votes. The fear of ‘Chinese DAP rule’ and the failure to secure youth votes were crucial factors in the Opposition’s failure to gain ground in the FELDA areas. Maznah Mohamad, in Chapter 6, shows that while FELDA schemes have become a vote bank for UMNO, the Malay vote is, in fact, fragmented. The maps that have been reproduced by Maznah indicate the almost perfect fit of FELDA schemes with seats won by UMNO in states which have these schemes. Maznah’s study confirms that there is a total of 54 FELDA parliamentary seats. Most significantly, states without FELDA schemes, such as Kelantan, have fallen to the Opposition, while Johor, because of the concentration of FELDA schemes, has remained a bastion of UMNO. According to the author, the FELDA factor has created UMNO ‘clientelist politics’ through the ‘corporatised village’ where voters have become beholden to politicians rather than the other way around. However, Maznah suggests that FELDA settler-cultivators represent only one stream of Malay voters, those captured by UMNO, while two other streams – urbanites and traditional villagers – have split their support between BN and PR. It remains a Herculean task for PR to penetrate FELDA areas to gain electoral ground. In Chapter 7, Tessa Houghton and Zaharom Nain convey the findings of a comprehensive survey of media and media coverage during GE13. The study of ‘Watching the Watchdog’, which spanned 27 of the most influential media in Malaysia, not surprisingly confirms that the government–owned or government-backed print and television media in English and Malay were greatly skewed to support the BN coalition during GE13, the worst offender being Bernama, the national news service. However, the Mandarin print media and the English and Malay online websites provided more balanced coverage. Content analysis of 450,000 data points coded from over 17,000 news articles showed a consistent pattern of biased tonal coverage by the media in favour of BN over PR. Houghton and Nain then discuss whether the internet and social media have ‘equalised the playing field’, but suggest that – contrary to conventional wisdom – research shows that ‘legacy media power’ has transitioned onto the online media environment. The authors conclude that the 52 per cent of Malaysians who want a change in government must seek out new media platforms to construct their national imaginings.



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

13

James Chin’s chapter draws on the notion of ‘developmentalism’ and on the importance of strong regional sentiments to explain what underpins the outcome in Sarawak. The author gives play to what he terms the ‘Pek Moh’ factor in Sarawak electoral politics – a reference to the political swaycum-corrupt power of Chief Minister Taib Mahmud. As expected, the Sarawak BN led by Taib Mahmud won the bulk of rural and Muslim seats, while conceding only six urban seats to PR, thus living up to its reputation as a ‘fixed deposit’ for the national BN. The big loser on the BN side was the fading Chinese-based SUPP which could only muster one seat. Despite Sarawak having a new chief minister, the author avers that the elevation of Taib Mahmud as Governor of Sarawak augurs for a status quo in politics. Chin concludes that the GE13 confirmed what is widely known about Sarawak – that the voting pattern in urban areas is becoming more similar to national trends while the rural areas are still driven by local dynamics. In his chapter on Sabah, Arnold Puyok claims that ‘despite changes in Malaysian politics since 2008’, Sabah’s political leaders have continued to focus on regional issues, such as the Borneo Agenda, to win support. The Borneo Agenda refers to the 20-point agreement which was supposed to safeguard the interests, rights and autonomy of the people of Sabah upon the state joining the federation of Malaysia in 1963. In GE13, two local parties – STAR (State Reform Party) and SAPP (Sabah Progressive Party) – made the Borneo Agenda their central platform, and this subsequently influenced BN and PR to also incorporate the Borneo Agenda, albeit in varying forms, in their manifestoes for Sabah. The GE13 outcomes showed that the Borneo Agenda ‘was widely supported by the Kadazandusun electorates but shunned in the Muslim-Bumiputera constituencies’. A majority of the Kadazandusun voters supported the opposition, but because STAR, SAPP and PKR could not form a united front the Kadazandusun vote was split among the three parties, thus benefiting BN. Importantly, even among STAR, SAPP and PKR, the latter frequently received more support from the Kadazandusun than STAR and SAPP because its platform, besides advocating selected aspects of the Borneo Agenda, also promised development agendas. Choong Pui Yee in Chapter 10 suggests that GE13 was arguably one of the most closely fought elections in Malaysia. The more popular and united opposition, Pakatan Rakyat (PR), posed a real threat to the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in this attempt to assume power. While PR generally

14

Coalitions in Collision

espoused ideas of social justice, welfare state and needs-based policy, BN continued to celebrate its track record in governing Malaysia with its service-oriented approach. An examination of the election campaign, where PR used the slogan of ‘Ubah’ (Change) and BN campaigned along ‘Janji Ditepati’ (Promise Fulfilled), seemed to suggest a decline in racial appeals and that both coalitions were moving towards centrist stances. However, a careful analysis of Titiwangsa constituency suggests that campaigning along the lines of racial segmentation is here to stay although not as starkly as before. In Chapter 11, Afif Pasuni shows that Islamic issues dominated the discourse prior to the election in the Malay-majority states of Kelantan and Terengganu, with each side promising economic and religious developments to entice voters. In addition to the prevalence of personality politics, popular religious preachers were exploited to garner support. In using the same religious platform – Islam – to further their cause, these competing political entities displayed varying degrees when it came to religion; UMNO’s adamant stance on issues pertaining to Malay-Muslim rights effectively forced PAS to abandon its more inclusive position. Such attitudes contributed to the persistence of Islamisation in Malaysian elections, in addition to a more complex situation where the line between the Islamic and Malay identities is ultimately being blurred. Mustafa Izzuddin’s chapter focuses on four parliamentary contests in Johor, a state he aptly calls the ‘jewel in Barisan Nasional’s crown’. BN has indeed hitherto achieved an almost 100 per cent triumph in Johor; it had won every Parliamentary seat in past general elections held except for 1978 and 2008 when it lost a single seat. Johor has remained a BN fortress because the coalition has, without fail, received an overwhelming majority of the Malay vote and a middling majority of the state’s Chinese and Indian support. However, in GE13 BN lost its majority Chinese support; it ‘plummeted from 52.7 per cent in GE12 to 21.3 per cent in GE13’, and only managed to ‘win a slight majority of the Indian vote which plummeted from 65.2 per cent in GE12 to 51.6 per cent in GE13’. Johor Malays, however, continued to staunchly support BN, which received nearly 82 per cent of the Malay vote. Thus, PR (DAP) won the Chinese majority seats of Kluang and Gelang Patah while BN (UMNO) won the Malay majority seat of Pulai. On the other hand, BN (MIC) won the Chinese majority seat of Segamat



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

15

while PR (PKR) won the Malay majority seat of Batu Pahat. Mustafa’s detailed study of the Kluang, Gelang Patah, Pulai and Segamat electorates shows that while most voters vote according to party, other factors also do influence voting behaviour – such as the character and ethnicity of candidate, campaign style, and so on. The ethnic voting pattern in Johor in GE13 undoubtedly shows that it is becoming more similar to that of the other peninsular states. In the final chapter of the volume, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman avers that GE13 symbolised a new chapter in Malaysian political development. The election saw the Malaysian government losing more political legitimacy when the ruling coalition lost the popular vote for the first time in the country’s history. The election is set to change the Malaysian political configuration. This new configuration is likely to see the current consociational model of governance being replaced by a Bumiputeradominant model which will result in the political strengthening of Bornean Malaysians. UMNO is also likely to enact new policies aimed at assuaging the Malay community; these include enhancing the country’s Islamisation drive and dishing out more economic goods to the Malays. On the part of PR, a more multi-cultural coalition with strong democratic credentials is likely to emerge. However, this is highly dependent on whether PAS will continue to take the rational approach of remaining in the coalition.

References Brown, Graham (2005) Playing the (non)Ethnic Card: The Electoral System and Ethnic Voting Patterns in Malaysia, CRISE Working Paper No. 21, Oxford: Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity. Crouch, Harold (1996) Government and Society in Malaysia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lijphart, Arend (1977) Democracy in Plural Societies, New Haven: Yale University Press. ——— (1994) Electoral Systems and Party Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in ThirtySix Countries, New Haven: Yale University Press. Lim Hong Hai (2002) ‘Electoral Politics in Malaysia: “Managing” Elections in a Plural Society’, in Aurel Croissant (ed.), Electoral Politics in Southeast and East Asia, Singapore: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, pp. 101–48. ——— (2005) ‘Making Elections Work: The Election Commission’, in Mavis

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Puthucheary and Norani Othman (eds), Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, pp. 249–91. Loh Kok Wah, Francis (2005) ‘Strongmen in Federal Politics in Sabah’, in Mavis Puthucheary and Norani Othman (eds), Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, pp. 70–117. Loh Kok Wah and Johan Saravanamutu (eds) (2003) New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Merthyr, T.D. (1954) Report of the Constituency Delineation Commission, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer (Merthyr Commission). Nohlen, Dieter (1996) Elections and Electoral Systems, 2nd edn, Delhi: Macmillan India. Ostwald, Kai (2013) ‘Malaysian Elections, Malapportionment and Delineations’, (http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2013/12/28/malaysian-electionsmalapportionment-and redelineation/?utm_source=Weekly+Journal+Article +Info-Alert+-+20131231&utm_campaign=Weekly+Alert+-+20131231&utm_ medium=email (accessed 7 January 2014). Puthucheary, Mavis and Norani Othman (2005) Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Rachagan, Sothi S. (1984) ‘Ethnic Representation and the Electoral System’, in S. Husin Ali (ed.), Ethnicity, Class and Development: Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: PSSM, pp. 124–38. ——— (1993) Law and the Electoral Process in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Rae, Douglas W. (1967) The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws, New Haven: Yale University Press. Reid, William (1957) Report of the Federation of Malaya Constitutional Commission, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (Reid Commission).

Notes 1

The brouhala was resolved when the Prime Minister stepped in to pacify MB Ahmad Said and probably to accede to some of his requests, including gracing the occasion of his daughter’s wedding. See http://www.thestar.com.my/News/ Nation/2014/05/18/Tganu-political-saga-ends-on-positive-note-All-is-well-asNajib-attends-wedding-of-Ahmad-Saids-daugh/ (accessed 24 May 2014). 2 The 56 per cent turnout was among the lowest in elections because BN pulled out of the contest and Ramkarpal’s opponents were not serious contenders. The Parti Cinta Malaysia (PCM) candidate, Huan Cheng Guan, garnered a near-respectable 3,583 votes. The other two independent candidates, Mohamed Nabi Bux Mohd Nabi Abd Sathar (799 votes)



Introduction: The Electoral System’s Impact on Outcomes

17

and Abu Backer Sidek Mohd Zan (225 votes) provided much comic relief to the voters. See Netto: http://anilnetto.com/malaysian-politics/malaysian-elections/ live-bukit-gelugor-election/ (accessed 4 June 2014). 3 For an analysis of the by-election, see http://www.malaysia-chronicle. com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=293692:unprecedent ed-mania-despite-loss-dyana-broke-new-ground-daps-post-mortem-onpoll&Itemid=2#axzz33MCosF8n and http://anilnetto.com/malaysian-politics/ malaysian-elections/teluk-intan-election-went-wrong-dyana-sofya/ ((accessed 4 June 2014). 4 Most news reports have alluded to the ‘proposed’ setting up of this technical committee, comprising shariah experts, announced by Deputy Premier Muhyiddin Yassin. PAS decided not to introduce its private member bills in Parliament in June after being invited to participate in this committee. See http://www.nst.com.my/latest/umno-proposes-national-level-hudud-technicalcommittee-1.580535 (accessed 23 May 2014). 5 There has been a flood of media commentaries on the episode. A chronology of some of the major events can be found in: http://www.themalaymailonline. com/malaysia/article/selangor-mb-crisis-chronology-of-events (accessed on 23 October 2014). 6 See also the prodigious work of Lijphart (1977, 1994, 1999) on democracy in plural societies, electoral and party systems, where he invariably alludes to manufactured majorities and their relevance to plural societies and consociational politics in many electoral systems. See further the comprehensive study of electoral systems by Nohlen (1996). 7 On the issue and analysis of rural weightage in Malaysian elections, see the extensive work of Rachagan (1984, 1993) and Lim (2002, 2005). 8 See Ostwald (2013), who has systematically analysed the extent of malapportionment in the GE13 and also the chapters by Saravanamuttu and Lee in this volume. 9 The Commission was appointed by Sir Donald MacGillivray, the British High Commissioner for Malaya; the members were Lord Merthyr (chairman), Mr W.C.S. Corry, Mr E.G. Farrington and Mr T.E. Smith (secretary). Prior to the setting up of the Commission, a 46-member committee of the Federal Legislative Council deliberated on the type of electoral system Malaya should adopt. On the basis of their deliberations, the terms of reference were set for the Methyr Commission. See Lim (2002: 103–4) for a recounting of the issues, debates and recommendations of this committee. 10 The narrative here is drawn from pp. 29–35 of the Reid Commission report (1957).

18

11

Coalitions in Collision

See Reid Commission (1957: 30), which notes that an EC member can only be removed in the manner one removes a Supreme Court judge. 12 Lim (2002) notes that UMNO was particularly peeved by the EC’s adherence to the Reid Commission’s stipulations on limits to weightage which drastically reduced urban–rural disparities would have given major disadvantages to the ruling party. 13 See Crouch (1996: 61) for an explanation of the rationale of this change. The secretary of the EC offered this reasoning: ‘we do not want the voters to wait in long queues, especially under the burning sun’ (ibid.). 14 See Loh (2005: 107–14) for a chronology of the delimitation exercise in Sabah and its effects. 15 We draw on the report from: http://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/bd/bdy/ bdy_my, accessed 21 October 2013 (written by Jeremy Grace, USAID sponsored Delimitation Equity Project). 16 See ibid.



New Politics or Old Politics in New Clothing?

19

Chapter 2

New Politics or Old Politics in New Clothing? Yang Razali Kassim

RISE OF THE YOUNG GENERATION Beyond doubt the 13th general election (GE13) of 5 May 2013 saw the young generation play a decisive role. Tending to be critical of the Establishment, it was the young and urban voters who rooted for the opposition, contributing in no small measure to the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) winning the popular vote for the first time, even though PR lost the majority vote and the right to rule to Barisan Nasional (BN) (Ibrahim, 2013). Analysts noted how the ‘505’ protest rallies immediately after the polls attracted large multiethnic crowds and predominantly young people. The record voter turnout at GE13 is said to be indicative of a ‘new wave of political awakening’ within the population (Loh, 2013). In the aftermath, the voices of the young continued to assert themselves in the public discourse on the future direction of Malaysian politics. One good example of this assertiveness is an article by a PhD student, Adil Johan, published by the vocal nongovernmental advocacy group Aliran entitled ‘Youth voters sparking New Politics in Malaysia’ (Adil, 2013). Arguing that GE13 had sparked the beginning of a ‘new direction in Malaysian politics’, the writer said the polls were the first time ‘for many young voters like myself in the 21–35 age bracket to exercise our right to decide on the country’s future and we have spoken very loudly’. The writer framed his views in terms of the search for political and social renewal. More Malaysians, he said, wanted a nation ‘free of corruption,

19

20

Coalitions in Collision

misinformation and racial politics. As such, the results of GE13 indicate an indisputable shift towards an era of new politics in Malaysia.’

THE GENESIS OF NEW POLITICS But what is ‘new politics’ and how did this idea come about? At the core, new politics is the antithesis to ‘old politics’ – the long-standing Malaysian political model based on race and ethnicity, or communal politics. Old politics emerged with independence, revolving around the concept of ethnic power-sharing in which the majority indigenous Malays controlled political power and enjoyed certain privileges as Bumiputeras (sons of the soil) in return for sharing their power with the other races – the Chinese and Indians – who were granted citizenship at the time of independence in 1957. This concept manifested itself as the three-party Alliance comprising UMNO representing the Malay, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) the Chinese and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) the Indian communities respectively. This consociational model, as it is also known, was further entrenched when it was expanded to become BN as a more inclusive coalition of several more parties in the aftermath of the 1969 racial riots to achieve political stability. The opposition Islamist party PAS initially joined BN but pulled out later following a coalition crisis while the other opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) stayed out completely. While critics tend to refer to it as a construct to assert ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy), the UMNO narrative has traditionally described this political model by its essence of power-sharing around which ethnic economic imbalances are rectified through redistributive affirmative action in the form of the New Economic Policy (NEP). This is based on the argument that the economic dominance of the ethnic Chinese since the early decades of the 20th century had generated unease amongst the politically dominant Malays. The resulting sense of insecurity required them to preserve the Malay core of the country by entrenching their political position as Bumiputeras. Through a ‘social contract’, the major communities were brought into the power equation of the ruling elite via the Alliance and later BN model while the economy was restructured through the NEP to eradicate ethnically stratified socio-economic imbalances. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, the BN model has proved effective enough all these years that it provided the superstructure for political



New Politics or Old Politics in New Clothing?

21

stability, which in turn brought about economic growth, propelling Malaysia into one of the fastest developing economies in East Asia. This combination of political stability and economic growth was a formula that ensured BN (and its predecessor Alliance) stayed in power since independence. Indeed, the UMNO-led political coalition has never lost power. Yet, despite its formidable political strength, BN’s popularity has not been completely safe from voter erosion and fatigue. The BN’s worst enemy for many years had not been so much a strong opposition as a weakening BN itself, torn by internal strife and leadership struggles within its key component parties, especially UMNO, MCA and MIC. Over time, the idea of communal politics has also suffered corrosion with the emergence of a new generation of Malaysians of all races, but critically the Malays, who are less enamoured by the politics of race and ethnicity, even as the race-based political model continues to be defended by the conservative political elite who dominate the system. A critical turning point came in 1998 with the Anwar saga – when the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim from UMNO and government catalysed the evolution of Malaysian politics from the race-based system to one that tries to free itself from communal politics, leading to the emergence of the Malay-dominated but multi-racial Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People’s Justice Party or PKR). This eventually led to the PKR-spearheaded opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance or PR) comprising PKR, the Chinese-dominated but multiracial Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the Islamist PAS. To be sure, the struggle over ethnic politics has been part and parcel of the political contestations in Malaysian politics. Despite the preponderance of the politics of communalism, prior to the emergence of PKR multiracial politics had been championed mainly by DAP, though it is arguable whether DAP has been successful in this. Indeed, DAP seemed unable to free itself from the ethnic politics of the dominant BN-defined system and has been seen more as a Chinese-dominant party championing, in reaction, largely ethnic Chinese aspirations despite its rhetoric of multiracialism. In recent years, however, DAP has been showing signs of some success in projecting its multiracial credentials, winning incremental support from the Malays. This shift came in the 2008 general election, but especially so in GE13 when DAP more decisively embraced PAS as a serious partner in the PR opposition coalition, with the three component parties – PKR, DAP and

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Coalitions in Collision

PAS – campaigning jointly and inspiring young voters with the prospect of a viable alternative coalition as a platform for the new politics of noncommunalism. However, four decades after the introduction of ketuanan Melayu and the emergence of BN, the Malaysian political system has engendered its own reformers. A number of thinkers – from scholars of politics and society to practitioners of politics from different political backgrounds – have been at the forefront of the discourse on what they see as the changing currents in the country over issues of identity. Prominent amongst them have been academics Francis Loh Kok Wah and Shamsul AB, PAS politicians Dzulkefly Ahmad and Mujahid Rawa and UMNO’s leading reform-minded politician Saifuddin Abdullah. Despite their differing backgrounds, they share some common links in their ideas: that the essence of new politics revolves around non-racial politics, good governance and justice. While the notion of new politics has its origins in secular ideas advanced by academics like Loh, reformist PAS politicians like Dzulkefly have also given an Islamic perspective. Writing in his blog just after the 2008 general election, Dzulkefly defined new politics as exhorting ‘all the positives and eschews all the negative attributes of a government. It’s for the rule of law, social justice and good governance and it despises corruption, rent seeking, cronyism, nepotism and draconian laws such as the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Official Secrets Act’ (Dzulkefly, 2009). He noted that post-2008, many of the non-Muslims’ prejudices towards PAS had been eroded; PAS needed to build upon this by celebrating plurality based on Quranic principles. He argued that PAS and its PR partners were united in their vision of a ‘new Malaysia’ built on nationhood based on their common ‘principles of good governance, justice for all, transparency and accountability’. One of the earliest scholars to note this shifting ground was Loh. Writing under the name Francis Loh in the Aliran Monthly in an article entitled ‘New Politics in Malaysia’ in the aftermath of the 1999 general election, he argued that the polls had shown that ‘there exists a New Politics in Malaysia’. Loh distinguished between two realms of politics: formal participatory politics involving political parties and non-formal participatory politics involving NGOs and community groups who did not necessarily focus on winning elections. ‘The BN’s hegemony over Malaysian society will not be as comprehensive as it used to be, again’ (Loh, 2003).



New Politics or Old Politics in New Clothing?

23

Ethnicity, he said, remained a very salient aspect of Malaysian politics. However, no longer to the same predictable extent. He noted that since 1998, a new discourse on participatory politics had gained ground among Malaysians, ‘particularly urban Malays’. He was referring to the critical year when Anwar was sacked from UMNO under highly controversial circumstances, leading to the emergence of the Reformasi movement which contributed to the formation of the opposition coalition that made the 1999 general election critical. As thousands of stunned Malays who supported Anwar defected to the opposition, many had expected a drubbing for UMNO and BN at the polls. In the end, BN did suffer by winning narrowly, but it retained power, partly because Chinese voters remained loyal to BN, thus neutralising the Malay swing towards the opposition. What has often been overlooked is that BN’s narrow win eventually led to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad stepping down in 2003 because he had become highly unpopular with the urban Malays for his controversial sacking of Anwar. Mahathir also retired as Prime Minister in stunning and dramatic circumstances, complete with emotional outbursts at the UMNO general assembly in the preceding year, exposing the internal rift within UMNO over the Anwar saga. The 1999 general election was the beginning of the erosion of support for the UMNO-led BN, with the ruling coalition polling 56.5 per cent of the popular vote, down from 65 per cent in 1995. Loh argued that closer studies revealed that the Malay and Chinese electorates were beginning to split down the middle. ‘The point also is that BN had lost its previous hegemony over the public, especially the NGOs. There occurred therefore, New Politics — not only the fragmentation of the ethnic communities but also open contestation of the ruling BN (sic) ideas .... The New Politics of fragmented ethnic communities and of contestations of political ideas is here to stay’ (Loh, 2003).1 Indeed, it can be argued that despite BN’s success under Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to reverse the losses of 1999 when he recaptured significant ground with a Malay return to UMNO following Mahathir’s exit, the larger trend seemed to be going south. In the 2008 general election, BN lost its two-thirds majority for the first time. In GE13, BN failed to recapture the two-thirds and even lost the popular vote to PR for the first time. It is against this broader trend of BN’s declining popularity that the evolution towards new politics gathered pace.

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Within UMNO, one of the most outspoken advocates of reform and shift from old politics to new politics is Saifuddin Abdullah. His book, New Politics: Towards a Mature Malaysian Democracy, was launched by Prime Minister Najib Razak a year after the 2008 polls which saw an erosion of popular support for BN. Saifuddin discussed two types of politics: old politics where money and corruption dominate and is antiquated; and new politics which embraces political discourse, and engages in a higherlevel battle of wits, intelligence, knowledge and integrity. He encapsulated the contrasting paradigms of new for old in terms of wisdom politics, not defamatory politics; and service politics not vote politics (Nurul Haziqah, 2013). Indeed, Saifuddin has developed his ideas of new politics as motivated by a desire to ‘put a stop to gutter politics and money politics’ and framed them in terms of what he called two circles: the developmental circle and the democratic circle. He sees himself as ‘not just talking about new politics but also practising new politics’.2 He wanted to promote a new approach to politics by taking it to a higher level based on four pillars: political integrity; a new governance framework in which the state, civil society and business work more closely together in genuine partnership; innovation and democracy; and what he calls ‘progressive political thoughts’ to ‘break away from old thinking’ (Ibid.). According to Saifuddin, his ideas on new politics were shared by Prime Minister Najib, who in private discussions had called for an end to the ‘sledgehammer strategy’ to politics. ‘Najib said ‘masa strategi tukul besi dah habis’ (the days of the sledgehammer strategy are over). Najib has also used the terms ‘model baru politik’ (new political model) and ‘transformasi politik’ (political transformation)’ (Ibid.). Indeed, Saifuddin argued, Najib’s repeal of the Internal Security Act (ISA) and the Emergency Ordinance (EO); amendment of the Universities and University Colleges Act; and introduction of freedom of the press were all policies to remove the vestiges of old politics.3 Saifuddin, however, came under heavy fire internally in UMNO for his reformist views. ‘I got a lot of flak from within UMNO. I have been accused of being a Pakatan guy planted within UMNO.’ Indeed, there was some disquiet within the party with Najib’s announced reform of the security policies. ‘The morning after Najib’s announcement on 15 September 2011, I received a call that some people were not happy with PM’s announcement.’



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Saifuddin himself suffered politically at the GE13. Despite his reformist credentials, he was defeated by a PAS leader, Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi, possibly due to internal sabotage because of his vocal criticism of his own party (Anisah, 2013). The fate of Saifuddin perhaps manifested the strains and resistance that confront UMNO as it embarks into unfamiliar terrain. Significantly, top UMNO leaders have acknowledged that a transformation of UMNO is a big challenge; the latest amongst them are former PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Najib himself. Abdullah, in the book Awakening: The Abdullah Badawi Years in Malaysia, described UMNO as a party at a crossroads that is difficult to reform. Najib, agreeing with his predecessor, described his own drive at reforming UMNO as a ‘gargantuan task’ that could take ‘a few generations’ (Lee, 2013). Given such sentiments at the top of the country’s ruling elite, the big question remains whether the current push towards new politics is more a flash in the pan than a trend.

13TH GENERAL ELECTION (GE13) AND NEW POLITICS It could be argued that GE13 was as much a contestation between old politics and new politics. But if the election began that way, the outcome threw up a totally unexpected turn with features that approximate those of new politics. BN, as the vehicle for old politics, came under a strong challenge from the opposition, who portrayed themselves as embodying the politics of the future. Although it failed to achieve its declared aim to dethrone BN through the ballot box in GE13, PR won the popular vote for the first time. BN won 133 seats in the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat of the national Parliament; this was by far its worst electoral showing since BN’s formation in 1973. The victory was seven seats fewer than the 140 seats won in the 2008 elections under Abdullah Ahmad Badawi when it lost its two-thirds majority for the first time. In GE13, BN under Najib failed to win back the two-thirds majority, which was one of its key targets. The loss of the popular vote – BN secured 5.3 million against PR’s 5.6 million – aggravated the situation for BN. If not for the weighted constituencies which favoured the rural areas where it was strong, as well as advance votes, BN would have lost the national election, according to the Merdeka Centre. Since then BN has been seen by many – certainly by the opposition – as having won essentially a pyrrhic or hollow

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victory. This has put pressure on Najib’s leadership as UMNO president and Prime Minister, an uncomfortable position that was somewhat eased, but not completely overcome, by BN’s victory in the Kuala Besut by-election of 24 July 2013 (Syed Jaymal, 2013). Going forward, while the road ahead to the next general election could be riddled with fluidity and uncertainty, there will be, at the same time, a centrifugal pull towards accommodation as seen in the initiative by Najib for national reconciliation. Viewed another way, we are seeing conflicting forces of change unleashed by GE13, all of which are interacting within, albeit, a generally stable political system. The rebellious instincts of the voters who were eager to bring about changes to the way politics is practised will continue to be countervailed by the status-quo instincts of the more conservative political players and rakyat who are pushing for greater stability and accommodation. The outcome of this heady mix of trends and countertrends will not be easy to predict given the increasingly complex nature of Malaysian politics. Within this mixture of fluidity, uncertainty and stability, three major currents or themes have emerged: ethnic polarisation, national reconciliation and political accommodation – each of which mirrors the contestations between old politics and new politics.

ETHNIC POLARISATION: OLD POLITICS OR ‘NEW POLITICS’? The ethnic factor culminating in BN’s worst electoral showing on 5 May was followed by a controversial statement by Prime Minister Najib when he proclaimed this drubbing as largely due to a massive swing towards the opposition by the traditionally pro-BN Chinese electorate. His characterisation of this swing as a ‘Chinese tsunami’ triggered a raging debate on whether the rising tide of the opposition was indeed due to a Chinese tsunami or a wider, multi-ethnic national phenomenon reflecting a larger urban discontent of which the Chinese voters were a significant part, largely because they tend to be urban dwellers. Some preferred to refer to the swing as also due to a ‘Malay flash flood’ towards the opposition, making the phenomenon more a broader-based Malaysian than a Chinese tsunami (Star Online, 2013). Indeed, if we take a longer-term view and see GE13 within the larger context of the evolution of Malaysian politics since the watershed emergence of Reformasi in 1998, the debate on whether GE13 was a Chinese tsunami



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against BN or not would take a different complexion. Reformasi was largely a Malay-centric phenomenon that marked the third major fissure in the Malay community. As advanced by Mahathir, the Malays are now divided into three factions (Bernama, 2011). The first break saw a split from UMNO, leading to the formation of PAS in 1951. The second break was the split in UMNO in 1987 leading to the formation of an oppositionist Semangat 46 led by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah following a bitter power struggle which saw Mahathir victorious by a slim margin. In typical Malay penchant for reconciliation in the name of unity, Razaleigh subsequently returned to UMNO after an ineffective attempt to rival it, and Semangat 46 died a natural death. The third split – following the 1998 sacking of Anwar – led to the eventual formation of Keadilan or Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and the rise of the PKR-centred PR opposition coalition. Although officially multiracial, especially in its leadership, PKR is essentially a Malay-dominant party, yet its appeal was such that it succeeded in melding a disparate opposition into a tripartite force, combining two diametrically opposed parties, the Islamist PAS and the essentially Chinese-based DAP. It is this three-party coalition that successfully attracted disgruntled voices largely from the Malay, Indian and Chinese communities. It is clear that the Chinese community swung decisively to the opposition in GE13, exacerbating the trend that was seen in the 2008 general election. The urban Malay community that had deserted UMNO following the sacking of Anwar in 1998 had remained essentially with the opposition, either supporting PAS or PKR, even though some – especially those in the rural fringes – had swung back to UMNO since the exit of Mahathir as party president. In other words, the Malay tsunami against UMNO post1998 may have been stemmed, but it had not been reversed. As a threeparty alliance comprising all major ethnic groups, PR is predominantly Malay in rank-and-file, given the broadly Malay membership of PAS and PKR. So the Chinese swing towards the opposition in GE13 was essentially adding another layer of support for the opposition that began with the third Malay split in 1998. In other words, the 2013 swing was not just a Chinese tsunami, but a Malaysian tsunami made complete by the Chinese swing to the opposition. In the 1999 polls that followed Anwar’s sacking a year earlier, BN suffered heavy losses but managed to retain power. Yet, seeing the writing

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on the wall amidst accusations of being a divisive leader despite his immense popularity, Mahathir soon retired in 2003. Mahathir’s exit from formal politics led to a revival of support for UMNO under Abdullah – a softer, gentler leader who led BN to one of its best electoral victories in the 2004 general election. But while Abdullah succeeded in slowing down the desertion of Malays from UMNO, he did not succeed, as a BN leader, in keeping Chinese support within BN’s Chinese-based allies, (MCA and Gerakan), both of which suffered significantly in the 2008 election. The 2013 election merely continued the erosion of support for MCA and Gerakan, leading to their historic losses to the point of undermining their position as legitimate representatives of the Chinese community in political bargaining within BN’s consociational system. Clearly, Chinese voters were switching their support to DAP and it was this significant break that Najib referred to as the ‘Chinese tsunami’ of GE13 at a press conference on 6 May 2013, just hours after the GE13 results were announced giving BN a simple majority. Najib said the opposition, especially DAP, had painted a false picture to the Chinese community that they could change the government by voting for the opposition, using the slogan ‘Ubah’ (Change). ‘(This was) As if the Chinese supported the opposition that they can change the government, while the reality was that even if a large number of the Chinese community voted against Barisan Nasional, we would remain,’ Najib said. ‘The reality is that Bumiputeras, including those in Sabah and Sarawak, and the Indian community, supported the BN – we cannot change the government without the support of the Bumiputeras’ (New Straits Times, 2013).

PENDAMAIAN NASIONAL: NATIONAL RECONCILIATION AS NEW POLITICS The narrative of a Chinese or Malaysian tsunami or Malay flash flood justified the argument of those who were concerned about the further polarisation of the country along ethnic lines as a result of GE13. The fragmentation of Malaysian society along parochial divides, exacerbating what was already a feature of Malaysian politics given the nature of the race-based political system, threw up an unexpected call by Najib for pendamaian nasional (national reconciliation) in a strategic ‘Big Tent’ approach to defusing the range of political pressures confronting him. The idea of national reconciliation was broached by Najib publicly for the first



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time at the same post-election press conference of 6 May when he talked about a Chinese tsunami. ‘The polarisation in this voting trend worries the government. We are afraid that if this is allowed to continue, it will create tensions …. One of the programmes we will undertake (as the elected government) is national reconciliation,’ Najib said (Anand, 2013a; Shahanaaz and Farik, 2013). What he meant by national reconciliation, and how it should be achieved, was left vague. This led to varying interpretations of what he had in mind. While some saw it as a reconciliation between the major ethnic communities, others asked whether it could equally apply to a reconciliation between the various political parties such that the widening gulf between the two sides of the political divide could be narrowed or bridged to bring about an overall cooling of temperature in the country as a whole. But Najib soon gave a clue about his thinking when he said in his Twitter three days later: ‘My task ahead is to harmonise communal issues. We need to approach others in a national reconciliation and moderation’ (Sinar Harian, 2013a). In an example of how diverse the interpretations had been, Zainuddin Maidin, a former minister, proposed that DAP join BN so that there would be Chinese representation in the new Cabinet, which had seen MCA and Gerakan vacating their posts following their dismal showing in GE13 (Sinar Harian, 2013b). It was not until the first sitting of the new Dewan Rakyat on 25 June 2013 that Najib expanded on what he had in mind. In response to a question by DAP leader Lim Kit Siang, Najib said the government planned to set up a national consultative council on unity. The council would involve civil society, academics and even political parties from both sides of the political divide. The council would have a free remit to discuss all major issues affecting unity, but three core areas would be race, religion and policies. ‘We can discuss all issues about race, religion and policies,’ he said. But Najib also, for the first time, laid down a condition for national reconciliation: the opposition must accept the results of the election, which he called the ‘main premise’ for national reconciliation. ‘But first accept the results,’ he said (Anand, 2013b). At around the same time, internal BN soul-searching about its own future identity following the less than satisfactory general election results spilled into the public domain. Debates emerged revolving around ending

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BN’s race-based politics and a possible merger of the component race-based parties into a single multiracial political vehicle – or what was referred to as 1BN. This idea of 1BN – certainly radical by the standards of Malaysia’s communal-oriented politics – was consistent with the unfolding drama towards national reconciliation. It gave more flesh to the initial bare-bone proposal for unity talks, but even this was still a raw proposal requiring much debate and consensus building and at different layers of the political stage. Given the fluidity, various scenarios of moves and counter-moves may unfold over the next few months or years as the players adjust to the flux (Yang Razali, 2013a). One possible scenario would involve a general reconciliation between BN and PR, involving the ruling BN on the one hand, and the opposition PR’s DAP, PAS and PKR on the other. In this scenario, however, a reconciliation not involving PKR – even some in the opposition believe – is more likely given UMNO’s ‘allergy’ to PKR (Nik Abduh, 2013). But evidence to the contrary has also emerged. Apparently, in the spirit of national reconciliation, Najib had extended an olive branch to Anwar to join BN in a unity government, offering him the post of Deputy Prime Minister and four Cabinet seats to PKR, which Anwar rejected.4 The offer was conveyed by Najib through Jusuf Kalla, the former Indonesian vice-president who played interlocutor between Najib and Anwar in a bid to reconcile the two leaders. This confirmed a report that described the offer as an olive branch from Najib (Netto, 2013). There is some controversy over who initiated this reconciliation move, but the fact remained that Najib’s idea of national reconciliation was a serious post-GE13 political project, pursued even with the involvement of foreign third parties. But true to its controversial nature, such reports were subsequently denied by Najib on 16 August in a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office. As swiftly as it was released, the statement was countered by Anwar’s PKR, which maintained that the unity government offer was a fact and that the PKR leadership and its allies in DAP and PAS had been briefed, presumably by Anwar, on the Najib initiative (Reme, 2013). Anwar’s apparent rejection of the offer – and Najib’s subsequent denial of any offer ever being made – was not surprising. For one, Anwar’s mission is to be the Prime Minister replacing Najib, not to be his second fiddle. Besides, an acceptance of this offer would almost immediately lead to a split within the PR coalition for which Anwar was not prepared. But in a



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surprising about-turn, and amplifying the fluidity of post-election politics, Anwar on 31 August 2013 offered Najib an olive branch for a broad dialogue to resolve a range of national issues, though he was snubbed by UMNO leaders for being ‘too late’ (Zurairi, 2013). At the same time, the pressure now would be on DAP, as the biggest GE13 winner in the opposition alliance – whether it wanted to push forward with its expanded role as the new voice of the Chinese community by joining a reconciliation government to replace MCA, the community’s traditional champion. Significantly, selective reconciliation moves involving the various ethnic-based component parties within BN as well as across the national political divide were also breaking out simultaneously. Malay unity talks between UMNO and PAS, which have been on-going since the time of Abdullah Badawi, are likely to be resurrected despite sporadic resistance from some quarters within PAS. In a new development, similar unity talks were also being attempted within the Chinese and Indian political communities. Within BN, MCA, Gerakan and the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) initiated merger talks to unite the Chinese-based parties. Notwithstanding the good intentions, these were expected to be difficult, as seen in the intra-party tensions surfacing in the public domain even within MCA between its top two leaders, Chua Soi Lek and Liow Tiong Lai. The same difficulties of clashing wills and interests were also being seen among the Indian-based parties within BN. These tensions suggest that the road ahead to national reconciliation will be an uphill one, if not marked by token initiatives.

NATIONAL RECONCILIATION AND 1BN: QUO VADIS NEW POLITICS? A related development arising from the push for national reconciliation as a counter-current to the polarisation of Malaysian politics is the drive to reform and transform BN from its current model as a race-based coalition of major ethnic parties into a single, merged multi-racial entity. On the 44th anniversary of the 13 May 1969 riots that gave birth to it, BN leaders went public with what had been an internal debate about its future identity. Amongst the first to speak up were UMNO secretary-general Tengku Adnan Mansor and UMNO Supreme Council members Nazri Aziz and Saifuddin Abdullah. Nazri called on BN to ubah – the same clarion call

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for change which had become synonymous with the opposition during the GE13 hustings. Nazri described BN as ‘outdated’ and a political vehicle that does not resonate with the younger voters. His comments evoked a response from Tengku Adnan, who revealed that BN could rebrand itself by merging its more than a dozen communal-oriented components into a single race-neutral entity. ‘BN could perhaps be made into a single party that is no longer race-based someday,’ he was quoted in an interview with the Malay Mail. The idea of rebranding and renewing BN had been earlier mooted by Saifuddin, the reform-minded ex-MP who surprisingly lost his seat to the PAS candidate. The day after his defeat he said ‘we are lucky to still be in government at the federal level’. He said to strengthen its position going forward, ‘we need to rebrand, there needs to be a new BN’ (Yang Razali, 2013b). A related significant comment came from Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin when he said that UMNO must make comprehensive changes to remain relevant ‘and retain power’. Given UMNO’s central role in BN, his remark underscored a readiness to correspondingly introduce changes in BN as a survival strategy. ‘When I went to the ground I found that some UMNO members are less enthusiastic now … they said the political ecosystem has changed and that they were worried that we would lose. In a situation like this … if UMNO wants to retain power, it must make some changes.’ (Bernama, 2013). Since then, various interpretations of what 1BN could mean have emerged as part of the evolving debate on a fundamental rethink of the coalition. There were even sceptics who doubted the seriousness of BN in its self-transformation project. However, reformists in UMNO such as Saifuddin believed that the reform of BN is inevitable, though it would not be immediately achieved. To him, 1BN could emerge at the earliest in two more general elections – in other words by or around 2023.5 In another manner of speaking, the next general election in five years’ time would still see the same BN model being used – with the attendant risks of it being rejected by the electorate or even its own supporters. This would be a big risk indeed because if the downward trend in support for BN continues, the next GE could see a BN defeat – and the beginning of a new era in Malaysian politics without BN in power.



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CONCLUSION: OLD POLITICS IN NEW CLOTHING? It could be argued that Najib’s ‘Chinese tsunami’ remarks were typically old politics. Yet, in the same breath, the Malaysian premier was exhorting forwarding-looking ideas that are reflective of the culture of new politics – a transition to non-racial politics. This apparently conflicting or contradictory disposition manifested either one or both of these states of affairs – that Malaysian politics is in a state of flux; or that it is indeed in transition from old politics to new politics. But it is perhaps premature to say that old politics, as manifested in communal politics, is being jettisoned. It may be more accurate to say that Malaysian politics is undergoing a process of introspection or self-examination, the outcome of which is still unclear. Paradoxically, it can even be said that the outcome of GE13 has entrenched parties that promote Bumiputera-ism – a pillar of old politics – despite the reduced majority faced by BN. As such, it is unlikely that these political actors would want to advance fundamental changes to politics without first securing their own interests in the future political landscape. One proponent of this view of entrenched Bumiputera-ist actors is Clive Kessler. Reflecting a perception of many observers of Malaysian politics, he argued that while BN had come out weaker, ‘UMNO’s domination of the governing BN coalition, of Parliament, public policy and national life generally had, perhaps oddly, been enhanced’ (Kessler, 2013). While BN’s total numbers were down from 140 seats in 2008 to 133 in 2013, UMNO increased its own from 79 to 88, or about two-thirds of the total BN strength of 133. UMNO’s main support now resides not in the original communal partners from the peninsula – MCA, MIC and Gerakan – but its newer allies from East Malaysia. And UMNO’s strongest East Malaysian ally in numeral terms is a Bumiputera party – Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB). Within BN, Peninsular UMNO, with 74 seats, and East Malaysian UMNO (Sabah and Labuan UMNO) with 14 seats, together control 88 seats out of the 133 BN seats in Parliament (Ibid.).6 PBB, with 14 seats, is the second strongest BN party — ahead of MCA (7), MIC (4) and Gerakan (1). It is a long-term UMNO ally which has, ‘at the doctrinal level, a strong ‘nativist’ or ‘Bumiputera-ist’ orientation and outlook’. Kessler says ‘in numerical and political terms, UMNO now dominates – as never before – the national government’. In fact, he adds, in national government, an era of unprecedented UMNO domination – and, very likely, an era of

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increasing, and increasingly Islamising and even Islamist, Malay political assertion – may now, I concluded, be in the offing.’ In other words, while GE13 has accelerated the shift towards new politics, it has also paradoxically strengthened the country’s Malay and Bumiputera parties, thus entrenching the champions of old politics. By extension, given the dominance of the Bumiputera parties, any transition from old politics to new politics will be determined and decided by the UMNO-led bloc. Thus any change in political culture is totally at the whim and fancy of the very political bloc whose own raison d’être will be unravelled should old politics be completely abandoned. It is in this respect that the UMNO-led drive to transform BN from a race-based coalition to a single, multiracial platform is inherently contradictory. While it is highly visionary, it is at the same time open to internal tensions that may stymie this visionary drive. We could wonder to what extent a party would want to ‘dig its own grave’ and be successful at it, given the internal struggles that such a drive is likely to unleash between those for and those against such a fundamental change in political ethos and identity. In short, while the trend towards new politics thrown up by GE13 is highly significant, it remains an open question whether and to what extent this trend will last – or whether it will be still-born.

References Adil Johan (2013) ‘Youth voters sparking New Politics in Malaysia’, Aliran, 23 May, pp. 1–2, . Anand, Ram (2013a) ‘Najib blames polls results on “Chinese tsunami”’, Malaysiakini, 6 May, . ——— (2013b) ‘PM: Reconciliation possible if GE results accepted’, Malaysiakini, 26 June, . Anisah Shukry (2013) ‘GE13: Big BN names defeated’, Free Malaysia Today, 6 May, . Bernama (2011) ‘Malays will become minority if they are divided, says Mahathir’, 9 November, . ——— (2013) ‘Muhyiddin: UMNO needs to change to stay relevant’, 8 July. .



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Dzulkefly Ahmad (2009) ‘PAS’ new politics’, drdzul.com, 28 April. Ibrahim Suffian (2013) ‘Voting Demographics in the 13th Malaysian General Election’, ISEAS Seminar, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 5 September. Kessler, Clive (2013) ‘Malaysia’s 13th national election: Some further remarks – Clive Kessler, The Malay Mail, 30 August, . Lee Long Hui (2013) ‘Najib: Pak Lah is right, it’s difficult to reform UMNO’, Malaysiakini, 8 Aug. Loh, Francis (2003) ‘New Politics in Malaysia’, Aliran Monthly. . Loh, Henry (2013) ‘A new Malaysia-post GE13’, Aliran, 11 June, . Loh Kok Wah, Francis and Johan Saravanamuttu (eds) (2003) New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: ISEAS. Lopez, Greg (2013) ‘Clive Kessler’s analysis on UMNO’s strategy and a correction’, New Mandala, 20 June, . Netto, Terence (2013) ‘The Gyrations of Jusuf Kalla’, Malaysiakini, 1 July, . New Straits Times (2013) ‘Chinese taken for a ride’, 8 May. Nik Abduh Nik Aziz (2013) RSIS Seminar on the 13th Malaysian General Election and the Future Direction of PAS, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, 6 February. Nurul Haziqah Abdul Halim (2013) ‘Call for New Politics Built on Battle of Wits and Integrity’, UKM news portal, 25 March. Reme Ahmad (2013) ‘Najib denies talk of ‘unity’ govt offer to Anwar’, The Straits Times, 17 August. Shahanaaz Habib and Farik Zolkepli (2013) ‘GE13: Najib – We will undertake national reconciliation’, The Star, 6 May, . Sinar Harian (2013a) ‘Harmonise communal issues: Najib’, 9 May. ——— (2013b) ‘Zam syor DAP sertai BN (Zam proposes DAP to join BN)’, 9 May, . The Star Online (2013) ‘A divide that’s growing wider’, 9 July, . Syed Jaymal Zahiid (2013) ‘For Najib, a leadership crisis dodged with Kuala Besut win, say analysts’, The Malay Mail, 25 July, . Yang Razali Kassim (2013a) ‘Post-GE13: Issues, Impacts and Future Trajectories’; presentation at RSIS Panel Discussion on GE13: Issues, Prospects and Future Trajectories, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). ——— (2013b) ‘Malaysian Politics Post GE13: The Deracialisation of BN?’ RSIS Commentaries 094/2013, . Zurairi AR (2013) ‘Dubious UMNO leaders say Anwar’s truce offer too late’, The Malay Mail, 30 August, .

Notes 1 2

3 4 5 6

Loh (2003). Loh subsequently expanded his ideas in a book, New Politics in Malaysia co-edited with Johan Saravanamuttu (Singapore: ISEAS, 2003). Author’s interview with Saifuddin Abdullah, 14 June 2013. Najib announced these policies on 15 September 2011 in a television broadcast to mark Malaysia Day. As confirmed to the author by a PKR source. Author’s interview with Saifuddin Abdullah, 14 June 2013. See also Kessler’s correction of his original number of seats for UMNO in Lopez (2013).



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Chapter 3

Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13 Johan Saravanamuttu

INTRODUCTION The 13th general election (GE13) could be seen as a failure for both Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Rakyat (PR, Pakatan). BN failed to win as many seats as it did in 2008, indicating that its coalition politics and consociational model are faltering, with little likelihood of advancement. PR’s failure to win the election and the fact that its two Malay-based component parties fared more poorly may be an indication that Pakatan’s power-sharing model is still wanting. Malaysian electoral politics have historically been premised on a hybridised model of ‘communalism’ (Ratnam, 1965) and ‘consociationalism’ (Lijphart, 1977). According to Ratnam, communal politics, a feature of the ‘plural society’ (Furnivall, 1948), drives communal interests through ethnically constituted political parties. However, in practice, communalism was married with a form of power sharing or ‘consociation’ (Lijphart, 1977) that was unique to Malaysia’s cultural make-up and its trajectory of political independence from the British. Lijphart argued that ethnically divided societies could live with their ethnic cleavages, that conflict could be contained by leaders of the ethnic communities and that democracy within such divided societies could be managed through formal institutional arrangements – such as federalism and proportional representation – to contain ethnic conflict. He suggested four conditions for the successful implementation of consociational

37

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democracy: a grand coalition of all ethnic groups; a mutual veto in decisionmaking; an ethnic proportionality in allocation of opportunities and offices; and ethnic autonomy, often through federalism. The corollary to Lijphart’s argument was that the adversarial democracy of the Anglo-American variety was unsuitable for plural societies. Writers like Milne and Mauzy (1980) have tried to show that Lijphart’s model can be applied with some modification to Malaysia. I am inclined to accept this thesis with the caveat that looking at Malaysian politics through the lens of consociationalism does not provide the whole picture. 1 Some have suggested that the consociational model may have lost its relevance altogether, while others still find it a cogent notion in framing Malaysia’s model of ethnic politics.2 I find that the model fails to include the class and political economy dimensions of politics, and how Islam has become a factor trumping most aspects of Malay politics. A newer theory of political engineering deploys ‘centripetalism’ as a countervailing concept to consociationalism (Reilly, 2006). Essentially, this approach suggests that a centripetal spin of moderate policies to a centre can blunt divisions in ethnically divided societies and thus lead to more sustained systems of electoral democracy. A major caveat of centripetalism is that robust institutional arrangements have to be engineered to fit the particular case in point. Reilly considers Papua New Guinea and Fiji to be examples where centripetal systems were adopted. Indonesia after 2004 is also thought to have introduced such a system based on devolutionist politics. Even Singapore with its group representation constituencies can be said to be an example of such a political model (Reilly, 2006: 85–6). When we turn to Malaysia, it is obvious that BN, with its consociational model, has dominated central political structures, while the emergent Pakatan Rakyat, which advocates more moderate, arguably more centripetal politics, remains weak institutionally and tends to revert to consociational tactics of ethnic bargaining rather than genuine multi-ethnic collaboration. The Islamic issue, in particular, has been a bugbear to instituting moderate centripetal policies. However, it is without doubt that PR has begun to outdo BN’s ethnic pooling of votes, particularly in urban constituencies. Moreover, PR’s ability to bring about ethnic collaboration rather than a mere ethnic division of labour is thought to be a feature of centripetalism.



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I take the view that the broad elements of a consociation were successfully incorporated into Malaysia historically and this has kept electoral politics on an even keel, if precariously, even after the fateful May 1969 general election. The ruling Alliance was replaced by its successor BN, which has practised its altered form of consociationalism since the mid1970s, but even this modification to its original model is beginning to fail. However, the more centripetal approach of PR remains institutionally weak and it remains moot whether it is able to take central control of the state, given the constraints of the existing electoral system.3 On the other hand, it does not seem that BN’s approach to power sharing holds any long-term future for Malaysian society as it veers more and more in the direction of Malay dominance and the valorisation of ethnic polarisation as its strategy for survival. Furthermore, its major dependence on Sarawak and Sabah Bumiputera support is predicated on a central government weakness rather than strength, along with the dwindling of its non-Malay support in the Peninsula. As for Pakatan, its component parties PAS and PKR are presently caught on the proverbial horns of a dilemma; in order to win more Malay votes it has to underplay MalayMuslim hegemony, the very factor that its nemesis, UMNO, capitalises on. Moreover, the Pakatan model of consociation is currently too weighted on one side of the equation – urban and non-Malay support. It is still not clear how Pakatan could improve on its power-sharing model in the future. Could it be that PR’s ethnic vote pooling or cross-ethnic voting gains of 2008 have ‘maxed out’ in 2013 and it can make no more significant inroads into rural and non-Malay terrains? More importantly, would it be likely to gain any more ground in the Malay heartland of the Peninsula and in the Bumiputera terrains of East Malaysia? Put differently, is electoral politics at an impasse, stymied by failing or yet to be operationalised power-sharing models, compounded by what has been generally referred to as the new urban–rural divide, largely coinciding with BN’s and PR’s current domains of success. The mal-apportionment of constituencies to rural areas is bound to favour BN over PR and is not likely to change too much in the foreseeable future. Moreover, a constituency re-delineation exercise due soon, with BN in power, is most likely to disadvantage PR rather than BN. In a real sense, the GE13 was a people’s and civil society’s ‘victory’ in that electoral political efficacy has never been greater (with voter turnout

40

Coalitions in Collision

records) while civil engagement has surged to its most impressive levels, even surpassing the engagements prior to GE12. For BN it was a pyrrhic exercise, given the resources expended and the less than satisfactory overall returns. Notably, a skewed electoral system, voter roll manipulations, unethical electoral practices and outright electoral fraud continue to stymie the movement towards a critical break or rupture for a ‘turnover’ electoral system, thought to be a feature of consolidated democracies. It could, however, be hypothesised that the progressive change in electoral dynamics, while affecting ethnic relations marginally, seems to have broken new ground, symbolised by a shift in the national popular vote to PR for the first time. Against this is the resurgence of the deeply embedded political discourse of Malay supremacy, which is reflexively reinforced by a pivotal Islamic discourse and practice among the Muslim population. In an article on the GE12 of 2008, I had argued 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 (Saravanamuttu, 2012: 102).

The above statement about the path dependence of new politics is validated a fortiori in the GE13 outcome in that the twin coalition system remained firmly on track and, more remarkably, no third parties won any seats at the Parliamentary level of contestation. Most third parties and independent candidates lost badly at both state and federal levels – many forfeiting their deposits – indicating that the electorate has by and large been socialised to a two-coalition system. Whether this path dependence develops further rests on oppositional capacity to remain on track and the continued strengthening of its institutional structures and political strategies to reap increasing returns.4 The concern of Pakatan watchers is whether the opposition alliance’s capacity may have reached an optimal level and could decline. When comparing the outcomes of 2008 and 2013, not much seems to have changed by way of broad voting patterns. PR’s impressive gain of



Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

41

the popular vote makes a new technical break, but with little substantial meaning; that is, it is only a signifier without a signified. It would seem that the more critical conjuncture in electoral politics occurred in 2008, which could be taken to be historically more path-breaking than the 2013 election.5 For the more sanguine among the opposition, the breach for an electoral victory could come by the next five years, but detractors could well argue that issues of PR leadership and internal dissent within PR parties coupled with the ageing PR leadership could prove to be insurmountable obstacles for such an outcome.

THE 2013 RESULTS One should first pose the question of what sort of ‘victory’ the outcome of the GE13 of 5 May 2013 represented for Barisan Nasional (BN), and then ask whether it was truly a defeat for Pakatan Rakyat (PR). Without a doubt it was an empty victory for BN given the copious amounts of money and resources expended in the campaign and yet it won a lower majority of seats and lost the popular vote. Many have raised the point of how BN could not be said to have truly won the election with only 47 per cent of the popular vote, while PR exceeded 50 per cent, customarily thought to be a marker of victory in most contests (See Table 3.1). Table 3.1: The Popular Vote, 2013 General Election Total Vote

Percentage

Peninsular Malaysia Pakatan Rakyat Barisan Nasional Others

5,035,611 4,322,129 89,986

53.29 45.74 0.95

Nationwide Pakatan Rakyat Barisan Nasional Others

5,623,984 5,237,699 192,894

50.87 47.38 1.74

Source: Azlan Zamhari, Malayskini.

Malaysia’s first-past-the-post (FPTP) system is particularly notorious for immense distortions of voter choice.6 In the 1969 election the Alliance

42

Coalitions in Collision

initially won a simple majority in Parliament with 48.4 per cent of the Peninsula votes, taking 66 of the 144 seats (Crouch, 1996: 74). Eventually when elections were continued in Sabah and Sarawak, it won 50.9 per cent of the votes and a total of 77 seats.7 Compared to 1969, the 2013 outcome, taking into account the Borneo states, proves to be a better result for BN, which won only about 47 per cent of the popular votes but garnered 60 per cent of the seats. Many analysts have pointed out that the Malaysian electoral system has been gerrymandered to favour incumbents and that constituencies have been apportioned to benefit rural areas.8 This has worked well for BN (and the Alliance before it) for all general elections since independence. The rationale for greater rural weighting was not initially thought to be unreasonable given that rural areas have scant access to resources and communication and deserved some form of affirmative action. However, the Election Commission (EC) has over time completely ignored a 15 per cent limit on weighting given to rural seats. This is the main reason for our current huge distortion of results. Figure 3.1 shows how mal-apportionment clearly disadvantaged PR in 2013. Figure 3.1: Parliamentary Constituencies Ranked by Size Parliamentary Constituencies, ranked by size Source EC data, 2013

BN

150000

Average Constituency sizes: PR: 77,655 BN: 46,510

100000

PR

50000

0

1 8 15 22 29 36 43 50 57 64 71 78 85 92 99 106 113 120 127 134 141 148 155 162 169 176 183 190 197 204 211 218

No. of Registered Voters

200000

Source: EC data, 2013

As noted before, in 1969 and in 2013 the Alliance and BN respectively failed to gain the popular vote but still retained power with a simple majority of seats. This anomaly is explained by BN mostly winning in predominantly rural and semi-rural areas (and with slimmer majorities)



Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

43

while PR won convincingly in the urban areas, giving rise to what is now labelled a rural–urban divide in Malaysia’s electoral politics. (I provide further analysis of this in a section below.)9 This is not to say that PR did not win at all in rural areas, only that its wins were smaller and the same goes for BN in urban seats. The often-stated fact about such lopsidedness is that Sarawak and Sabah have been allocated 31 and 25 seats respectively, accounting for a quarter of the total Parliamentary seats and thus have been dubbed BN’s ‘fixed deposits’. In this election, the two states combined delivered 47 seats to the ruling coalition, as shown in Table 3.2. Table 3.2: 2013 Election Results Parliament

State

At Stake

BN

PR

At Stake

BN

PR

Perlis Kedah Penang Perak Kelantan Terengganu Pahang Selangor N.S Melaka Johor Kuala Lumpur Putrajaya Labuan Sabah Sarawak*

3 15 13 24 14 8 14 22 8 6 26 11 1 1 25 31

3 10 3 12 5 4 10 5 5 4 21 2 1 1 22 25

0 5 10 12 9 4 4 17 3 2 5 9 0 0 3 6

15 36 40 59 45 32 42 56 36 28 56 – – – 60 71

13 21 10 31 12 17 30 12 22 21 38 – – – 48 55

2 15 30 28 33 15 12 44 14 7 18 – – – 12 15 (+1 Ind.)

TOTAL

222

133

89

567

331

246

Source: EC * 2011 Sarawak state election results

THE CONTEST FOR STATES The sense of palpable failure to maintain the five state governments it won in 2008 was clearly felt by Pakatan supporters. The failure to maintain control of Kedah and near miss of success in Perak were symbolic of this failure. In this section I will analyse the twin-coalition tracking at the

44

Coalitions in Collision

state level of contest. An obvious question is whether Pakatan’s slippage in Peninsular states represents a re-strengthening of BN clout and its own path dependence at this level of contestation. Table 3.3 shows electoral percentages or the opposition’s popular vote since the 1995 election. Without doubt, a clear path dependence of opposition advancement has been maintained except for the dip in 2004 for most states. That said, only five state results have been able to rise above the crucial 50 per cent of popular votes thus far for the opposition and that, too, only after 2004. Table 3.3: Vote Percentages for Opposition Parliamentary Candidates, 1995–2013 Change 2004-08

Change 2008-13

43.5

+3.6

+3.6

47.6

+13.0

-5.6

55.0

52.8

+6.3

-2.2

43.6

44.7

47.8

+1.1

+3.1

43.2

63.0

66.8

+19.8

+3.8

44.1

40.5

53.3

53.6

+12.8

+0.3

28.4

42.6

32.3

40.5

43.4

+8.2

+2.9

24.7

44.8

34.0

55.4

58.4

+21.4

+3

41.1

49.4

41.2

62.0

64.0

+20.8

+2

-

-

11.7

24.4

30.4

+12.7

+6

N.Sembilan

29.7

40.8

30.1

45.1

46.3

+15.0

+1.2

Melaka

31.7

43.4

28.8

42.6

45.3

+13.8

+2.7

Johor

20.5

27.1

20.4

34.7

43.7

+14.3

+9

State

1995

1999

2004

2008

2013

Perlis

31.5

43.8

36.3

39.9

Kedah

35.3

44.2

40.2

53.2

Kelantan

56.7

60.9

48.7

Terengganu

45.4

58.7

Penang

39.0

48.4

Perak

31.7

Pahang Selangor KL Putrajaya

Source: Philip Khoo (2008: 4) and Election Commission, Malaysia, 2013.

It is interesting that in 2013 Pakatan registered a positive improvement in all states over 2008 except for Kedah (not surprising) and Kelantan (somewhat unexpected). Of note is the opposition vote in Putrajaya where PAS heavyweight Husam Musa made the spectacular gain of six percentage points although he lost. Three other brief observations deserve to be made. First, Perlis and Terengganu, two Malay-dominant states, registered a significant 3-plus percentage points of improvement. Second, Penang,



Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

45

Selangor and Kuala Lumpur seem destined to be Pakatan terrain, with the popular vote reaching 67 per cent, 58 per cent and 64 per cent respectively. These cases illustrate graphically that urbanisation and modernisation are the major broad factors behind Pakatan’s advance. Third, the Perak situation was particularly illustrative of the problem of mal-apportionment in the electoral system. Pakatan won 54 per cent of the popular vote in Perak compared to BN’s 45 per cent, but the latter was able to form the state government with 31 elected representatives compared to PR’s 28. Based on statistics, I would suggest that path dependence of opposition strength has been maintained at the state level of contest even though Pakatan clearly lost Kedah in 2013. A word needs to be put in about the so-called ‘frontline states’. This notion came into the electoral parlance following an article by DAP’s Liew Chin Tong in which he alluded to the ‘dominoes in Johor’ (Liew, 2013). Johor’s voter profile in 2013 of 53.2 per cent Malays, 39 per cent Chinese, 6.5 per cent Indians and 1 per cent Others made it a candidate for such thinking. In comparison, the now dominant Pakatan state of Selangor has the following similar profile: 50 per cent Malays, 34 per cent Chinese, 14 per cent Indians and 1 per cent Others.10 According to Liew’s simulation exercise, given the large number of mixed seats in Johor, with Malay support at only 35 per cent but Chinese support at 75 per cent, 16 BN seats would fall to Pakatan. The idea also developed that Negeri Sembilan was in a similar situation with Pakatan only three seats short of state incumbency. Using Liew’s idea, I have defined ‘frontline states’ to mean those that would be defended stoutly or won by either side at the state level and also those that could deliver a significant number of Parliamentary seats to the opposition towards its goal of capturing the government. Let’s focus particularly on the outcomes in Johor, Negeri Sembilan, Sabah and Sarawak. Pakatan made an unprecedented penetration of Johor, customarily touted as UMNO’s and MCA’s bastion. From a standing of merely one Parliamentary and six state seats, PR has now secured five (out of 26) Parliamentary and 18 (out of 56) state seats. In the battle royale of Gelang Patah, DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang resoundingly defeated Abdul Ghani Othman, the former Menteri Besar, by 14,762 votes in a mixed parliamentary constituency of over 106,864 electors. Thus Johor no longer appears to be a safe haven for BN. Many BN defeats came from MCA losses,

46

Coalitions in Collision

while PKR picked up one Parliamentary and one state seat and PAS took four state seats, an improvement of three from the previous outing. DAP was Pakatan’s major winner, securing three new Parliamentary seats and 14 state seats, 10 more than before. Two significant defeats for PR came from Salahuddin Ayub, a PAS vice president, losing in Pulai and Chua Jui Meng, a PKR vice president, losing in Segamat. All said, UMNO stayed its ground in Johor and denied Pakatan parties the larger breakthrough they had hoped for. In Negeri Sembilan, the status quo was more or less maintained, with Pakatan holding on to three (out of eight) Parliamentary seats but with the loss of one state seat, taking 14 out of 36 seats. This result put paid to the suggestion that Pakatan was en route to capturing state power and capable of taking an extra four seats from the outcome of 2008. In an almost similar situation in Perak, Pakatan was three short of reassuming the state power that it lost by cross-overs in 2009. Oddly, while no major plan to capture Terengganu was announced, Pakatan came within spitting distance, two seats short of the target, and winning about 48 per cent of the popular vote. In Sabah and Sarawak there were gains but no major breakthrough for Pakatan. In Sarawak, six Parliamentary seats were captured, a modest gain, five delivered by DAP and one by PKR. In Sabah, the capture of three Parliamentary seats by Pakatan was two more than before. As such this was a poor performance due mainly to multi-cornered contests in many seats. However, at the state level, Pakatan’s penetration could be said to be significant with PKR winning seven seats and DAP, four. All said, Pakatan’s foray into the new frontline states and its defence of old terrain failed to yield the desired results. There was the loss of Kedah, the less than stellar performance in Negeri Sembilan, while the lacklustre results in Sabah and Sarawak proved crucial in its failure to gain the seat of power in Putrajaya.

ETHNIC AND CROSS-ETHNIC VOTING PATTERNS In this section we will compare the ethnic character of voting as well as the level of cross-ethnic voting in the 2008 and 2013 elections. A major reason for the exercise is to explore and validate if there has been path dependence from one election to the next and if there is any indication of breakthroughs, especially in cross-ethnic voting. We will begin by examining the broad



Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

47

patterns of the ethnic vote and then move on to consider results of the largely mixed constituencies in the Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory. Figures 3.2–3.4 comprise six scatter plots showing parliamentary seats won in 2008 and 2013 by the main parties in Peninsular Malaysia in terms of the ethnic proportionality of the seats. Based on data provided by the Election Commission, the parties of the ruling coalition have been collapsed into BN, while the opposition’s three parties are displayed. Ethnic proportionality in terms of Malay, Chinese and Indian votes is measured by simple percentage. The first broad observation is that the scatter plots of the two outcomes reveal almost identical results and an almost identical pattern. As I have stated before, Malaysian political parties are still predominantly ethnic in their electoral politics or, to put it more specifically, UMNO and PAS tend to be successful in predominantly Malay constituencies while DAP is particularly successful in predominantly Chinese constituencies. The rising contender in mixed constituencies tends to be PKR, which has performed with great success in the last two outings. We could extrapolate from the scatter plots that non-Malay political parties of BN, such as MCA, Gerakan and MIC, also find some electoral success in mixed constituencies despite their ethnic orientation, but have faded visibly in this category of seats even as PKR and, to some extent, DAP have increasingly established their presence. What was written in broad strokes about Malay voting behaviour in 2008 (Saravanamuttu, 2012) evidently still holds for 2013. We can clearly see PAS and DAP at two extreme ends of the Malay voting continuum, PAS winning in high-density Malay constituencies with DAP taking low-density Malay seats. PKR plays the expected role of winner of the mixed seats and thereby holds the PR coalition together. Figure 3.3 shows the obverse position vis-à-vis Chinese high-density constituencies. The PKR coalition again holds the middle ground, but with DAP taking more seats in this category in 2013. When looking at BN’s performance, which unfortunately is not broken down into that of its component parties, it can still be deduced that UMNO wins the high-density Malay constituencies. A much larger proportion of high- to middle-density Malay constituencies is won by BN, suggesting that its component parties can also do well in Malay majority constituencies. A clear rejection of BN parties in Chinese high-density constituencies is indicated by the two figures of 2008 and 2013.

48

Coalitions in Collision

Figure 3.2: Malay Voters by Seats Won 2013

Figure 3.3: Chinese Voters by Seats Won 2013

Figure 3.4: Indian Voters by Seats Won 2013



Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

49

Turning to the Indian vote as shown in Figure 3.4, the main point of note is that PKR has performed very well along with DAP, with two PAS outliers seemingly securing high Indian votes. Since there are no real highdensity Indian constituencies, with 30 per cent as the uppermost limit, one could extrapolate that winning seats above the 15 per cent margin is a good indicator of strong Indian support. While the BN parties fared poorly in securing the Indian vote, with barely four wins in 2008, this performance improved to nearly seven wins in 2013 in that category. The break-up of HINDRAF and the overall fragmentation of Indian political entities on the opposition side explain MIC’s credible performance in 2013. PKR, acting as a multi-ethnic political party and offering a slew of multi-ethnic candidates, continued to secure the middle ground with some marginal losses in the latest outing. Its partners, DAP and PAS, continue to hold their own on predominantly Chinese and Malay terrain. The new Pakatan arrangement has clearly dented BN’s advantage of winning mixed constituencies which were the earlier domain of the BN political parties such as MCA, Gerakan and MIC. I would argue that path dependence was created in the mixed electoral constituencies in 2008 and continues to hold. This argument will be extended below in the analysis of the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor voting pattern with respect to Malay-weighted and Chinese-weighted mixed seats.

CROSS-ETHNIC VOTING IN KUALA LUMPUR AND SELANGOR Kuala Lumpur (KL) and urbanised Selangor have turned out to be disaster zones for BN in the last two electoral outings. Table 3.4 shows the KL seats and voting outcomes for 2004, 2008 and 2013. Again, hardly anything has changed except for BN wresting Titiwangsa in 2013 after the massive slide since 2004. UMNO candidates only won three seats while its nonMalay partners have lost complete presence. UMNO continued its win in the predominantly Malay constituency of Putrajaya where civil servants constitute the majority of the electorate, but PAS picked up another six percentage points in 2013. All the mixed seats but two fell to Pakatan in 2013. Despite gaining two percentage points in the popular vote to a noteworthy 64 per cent, one more seat fell to BN in 2013. Most significantly, Pakatan won all the mixed constituencies which had a high percentage of Malay voters, except for Setiawangsa and Titiwangsa. The top-performing Teresa Kok of DAP, who had won a 19.4 per cent swing of votes in Seputeh

50

Coalitions in Collision

in 2008, continued her stellar performance in 2013 with a 51,552 majority of votes or about 72 per cent of the total votes. Table 3.4: Ethnic Composition and KL (including Putrajaya) Results, 2004–2013

Kepong

Malay %

Chinese %

Indian %

2004

2008

2013

4

89

6

DAP

DAP

DAP

Batu

44

38

16

GERAKAN

PKR

PKR

Wangsa Maju

52

40

7

UMNO

PKR

PKR

Segambut

33

53

12

GERAKAN

DAP

DAP

Setiawangsa

56

30

11

UMNO

UMNO

UMNO

Titiwangsa

68

20

10

UMNO

PAS

UMNO

Bukit Bintang

14

73

11

DAP

DAP

DAP

Lembah Pantai

55

23

20

UMNO

PKR

PKR

Seputeh

5

88

6

DAP

DAP

DAP

Cheras

10

82

7

DAP

DAP

DAP

Bandar Tun Razak

53

37

9

MCA

PKR

PKR

Putrajaya

94

0

3

UMNO

UMNO

UMNO

Source: Ooi, Saravanamuttu, and Lee (2008) and Election Commission, 2013

One of the most serious challenges for Pakatan came in the mixed constituency of Lembah Pantai, where Nurul Izzah, Anwar Ibrahim’s daughter, defeated three-term incumbent and Women’s Minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil in 2008. Riding the 21 per cent in the voter swing in KL, Nurul won by a 2,895 majority, an impressive result by any measure for a novice candidate. In 2013 she faced the formidable Raja Nong Chik, the Federal Territories and Urban Well-Being Minister who pulled no punches in trying to unseat her in a particularly acrimonious contest marred by incidents. A major controversy revolved around the large number of new voters in Lembah Pantai; on polling day, Pakatan supporters blocked cars allegedly carrying a number of ballot boxes into the counting centre after polling was over.11 In 2013 more than 16,000 new voters had registered in the 72,533-strong Lembah Pantai, which has a voter profile of 53 per cent Malays, 23 per cent Chinese, 20 per cent Indians and about 2 per cent



51

Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

Others. In the event, Nurul retained the seat with a majority of 1,847 votes. In 2008 Selangor (together with KL) registered the largest vote swing of about 21 per cent for Pakatan in both Parliamentary and state contests, winning 55 per cent of the total votes. In 2013 Pakatan added another 3 percentage points to its popular vote in Selangor, making its tally 58 per cent of the popular vote, next in line to KL (64 per cent) and Penang (67 per cent). Pakatan’s hold on Selangor continued, with the coalition winning 17 of the 22 Parliamentary seats, one fewer than in 2008. Table 3.5: Ethnic Composition and Selangor Results, 2004–2013 Malay %

Chinese %

Indian %

2004

2008

2013

Sabak Bernam

81

13

5

UMNO

UMNO

UMNO

Sungai Besar

66

31

2

UMNO

UMNO

UMNO

Hulu Selangor

56

23

18

MIC

PKR

MIC

Tanjong Karang

72

17

10

UMNO

UMNO

UMNO

Kuala Selangor

64

13

22

UMNO

PAS

UMNO

Selayang

45

36

17

MCA

PKR

PKR

Gombak

74

13

11

UMNO

PKR

PKR

Ampang

55

34

10

UMNO

PKR

PKR

Pandan

44

48

7

MCA

PAS

PKR

Hulu Langat

53

34

11

UMNO

DAP

PAS

Serdang

39

49

11

MCA

DAP

DAP

Puchong

39

44

16

GERAKAN

DAP

DAP

Kelana Jaya

38

42

18

MCA

PKR

PKR

Petaling Jaya Selatan

40

42

17

MCA

PKR

PKR

Petaling Jaya Utara

14

77

7

MCA

DAP

DAP

Subang

48

38

13

MIC

PKR

PKR

Shah Alam

69

15

14

UMNO

PAS

PAS

Kapar

51

34

14

MIC

PKR

PKR

Klang

32

46

20

MCA

DAP

DAP

Kota Raja

44

25

29

MIC

PAS

PAS

Kuala Langat

52

26

17

UMNO

PKR

PKR

Sepang

57

22

16

UMNO

UMNO

PAS

Source: Ooi, Saravanamuttu & Lee (2008) and EC (2013)

52

Coalitions in Collision

In 2013 (as in 2008), DAP and Pakatan swept the four constituencies where Chinese made up the majority or largest number of voters: Petaling Jaya Utara, Klang, Serdang and Petaling Jaya Selatan (Table 3.5). DAP also won in the mixed seat of Puchong which had the largest number of Malays. PAS candidates defeated UMNO counterparts in the mixed Malay plurality constituencies of Shah Alam and Hulu Langat, but unexpectedly lost narrowly in Kuala Selangor this time around. The highly respected PAS standing committee member and head of PAS’s research centre, Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, lost to his UMNO opponent by a mere 460 votes in this constituency comprising 64 per cent Malay, 13 per cent Chinese and 22 per cent Indian voters.12 It is clear from the overall results in KL and Selangor that Pakatan continued to win middle ground in Selangor. I would argue that the pathdependent trajectory of the voting behaviour in mixed constituencies largely explains how Selangor has become a Pakatan domain and the likelihood of its continued success in the future.

THE RURAL–URBAN DIVIDE From the outset of elections there has been an urban–rural divide in Malaysian electoral behaviour, but this divide had a particularly important impact on the 2013 outcome. This divide, generally coinciding with ethnicity, has always been a factor in Malaysian elections and assumed a further new dimension with the inclusion of Sarawak and Sabah rural constituencies and the Election Commission’s practice of giving rural weighting to such constituencies. Given rapid urbanisation, the character of such rural weighting has been further exaggerated, making BN even more dependent on the rural vote. The 2013 result shows this to be the case in that without such rural weighting electoral success would have in all probability eluded BN. According to Politweet (Malaysia), an independent online research facility,13 the Malaysian electoral terrain in 2013 can be divided up in the manner shown in Table 3.6. The definitions of rural, semi-urban and urban used were: rural = villages (kampungs)/small towns/farmland; semi-urban



53

Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

= larger towns and/or clusters of small towns, and may also include villages; urban = cities where a large proportion of the seat is covered by some form of urban development.14 Politweet used this classification based on Google Maps satellite imagery, which it superimposed on the EC’s electoral maps. While not ideal, this seems like a creative manner of capturing crucial electoral data.15 Table 3.6: Rural and Urban Seats Malay Majority

Bumi Sabah Majority

Bumi Sarawak Majority

Rural Seats (5.756.489 voters)

78

16

18

2

11

125

Semi-urban (3,952,432 voters)

27

3

1

12

11

54

Urban (3,559,081 voters)

14

-

-

16

13

43

Chinese Mixed Majority

Total

Using these categories, Table 3.7 shows incontrovertible evidence of the rural–urban electoral divide manifested in BN and PR domains of success. The starkness of this political rural-urban divide is shown graphically in Figure 3.5. Table 3.7: Rural–Urban Divide between Electorates Malay Majority

Bumi Sabah Majority

Bumi Sarawak Majority

BN

66

15

18

–

9

108

PR

12

1

–

2

2

17

BN

12

3

1

–

4

20

PR

15

–

–

12

7

34

BN

4

–

–

–

1

5

PR

10

–

–

16

12

38

Chinese Mixed Majority

Total

Rural

Semi-urban

Urban

54

Coalitions in Collision

Figure 3.5: BN-PR Electoral Divide

As analysts have pointed out, BN’s electoral success has increasingly become dependent on its hold on rural constituencies, while it has effectively lost the urban vote.16 Its hold on Malay-majority rural seats is particularly important, delivering 66 seats. However, without the 33 East Malaysian rural seats, it is obvious that BN would not have been able to secure Putrajaya. On the other hand, Pakatan will continue to elude electoral success unless it can penetrate the rural terrains, particularly of Sarawak and Sabah, which have become almost exclusive BN territories. Table 3.8: Voter Profile, 2013 Malays

6.9 m (52.5%)

Chinese

3.8 m (29%)

Indian

953,478 (7.1%)

Bumiputera Sabah

634,654 (5%)

Bumiputera Sarawak

528,413 (4%)

Orang Asli

69,703 (0.5%)

Thai Malaysians

115,000 (1%)

Total

13.29 m (sic)

Age Profile

Total under 40 years: 5.56 m (41.9%)

Source: The Straits Times (5/4/2013)

30–39 years: 3.02 m (22.8%)

21–29 years 2.54 m (19.1%)



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THE NEW VOTERS There was much talk prior to the election that the large ballooning of the electorate with an additional 2.3 million, presumed to be young, voters would play a crucial role in affecting the 2013 outcome.17 Voter breakdowns for 2013 are shown in Table 3.8. Both BN and Pakatan targeted young voters as a group in their election strategies, the former offering vouchers for smartphones and cash hand-outs to singles, while the latter promised free education and lower car prices. It is difficult to track the young vote. Francis Loh (2003) attempted, among other things, to study this in the 1999 GE in one constituency (Bukit Bendera in Penang) by analysing stream (saluran) results. He came to the conclusion that: ‘A review of party preference according to saluran clearly indicates that DAP is the choice of younger voters while BN is usually the preferred party of the older voters.’ (Loh, 2003: 170–1). However, one study is inadequate evidence to debunk the null hypothesis that young voters behave much like the other voters.18 In the discussion below, I will analyse some of the 2013 saluran data from the parliamentary constituency of Klang in order to extrapolate information about voting choices of the new voters, much as attempted by Loh.19 Klang is a 97,252-strong constituency of Selangor with a mixed voters’ profile of 32.9 per cent Malays, 45.8 per cent Chinese, 19.8 per cent Indians. There is a smattering of Bumiputera from Sabah and Sarawak and also some Orang Asli. As shown in Table 3.9, the overall results of Klang show that PR’s candidate Charles Santiago defeated BN’s Teh Kim Poo convincingly by winning 65 per cent of the valid votes. To try to extrapolate whether new voters were significantly different in their choice, I added up the votes in the last stream (saluran) of every polling station – 37 in all – minus that of polling stations for postal voting and early voting, and one polling station which had only one saluran. The last saluran in each polling station would normally comprise the most recently registered voters. For example, one polling station in Klang had 10 streams; thus one could assume that saluran 10 would comprise predominantly newly registered and presumably young voters who have come of voting age.20 At the end of the day, the data appear to show very little to no significance in the manner ‘new voters’ voted compared with those of other streams. Santiago’s additional winning margin of about 0.4 per cent among the new voters is a rather insignificant statistic.

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Table 3.9: Klang (P110) Results, 2013 General Election Overall

Teh Kim Poo (BN)

Charles A Santiago (DAP)

Total (178 saluran)

Valid votes

29034

53719

82753

Percentage

35.09

64.91

100

New Voters

Total (37 saluran)

Valid votes

6485

12227

18712

Percentage

34.66

65.34

100

Thus, from the evidence adduced from the Klang results it is not possible to draw any strong conclusion that new voters are any more pro-Pakatan or vice versa than their older counterparts. This said, further analysis is necessary to determine in what sort of constituencies or regions the youth vote may have made a difference.

‘CHINESE TSUNAMI’? Najib Razak’s knee-jerk reaction to the GE13 results at his first press conference was that it was a ‘Chinese tsunami’ (contra ‘political tsunami’ in 2008) that reduced BN’s majority in 2014, not to say, delivered a majority of the votes to Pakatan. An academic publication has argued that this was indeed the case, suggesting that ‘more than 85 per cent of the Chinese supported the Opposition’. Chin argues that since Pakatan received 5.6 million votes, it can be assumed that the Chinese delivered more than 2 million votes to it (Chin, 2013: 499). It is not possible to have actual figures of ethnic votes from the election data and thus Chin’s extrapolation is merely a hypothesis. In studying the Kepong result, Choong (in this volume) argues that a Chinese tsunami did occur there. Kepong is the parliamentary constituency with the highest percentage of Chinese voters (89 per cent), and the DAP candidate Tan Seng Giaw won some 82 per cent of the vote (my own calculation). However, one swallow does not make a summer. In this section I will try to show that the hypothesis about a ‘Chinese tsunami’ does have some validity and could be sustained from examining the available data more rigorously but, at the same time, it remains axiomatic that a large percentage of Malay votes (probably about 40 per cent or more) had to be secured by the opposition for the results of May 2013.

Power Sharing Politics and the Electoral Impasse in GE13

Percentage of Votes Won



Figure 3.6: BN & Malay Voters

100

y = 0.346x + 25.64 R² = 0.431

80 60

UMNO seats

40 20 0

0

50

100

150

Percentage of Malay Voters

Figure 3.7: PR & Malay Voters

Percentage of Votes won

100

60 40

PR votes %

20 0

100

Percentage of Votes Won

y = -0.233x + 57.54 R² = 0.211

80

0

50

100

Percentage of Malay votes

Figure 3.8: BN & Chinese Voters y = -0.417x + 58.90 R² = 0.466

80

60 40

BN Seats

20 0

0

50

Percentage of Chinese Voters

100

57

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Figure 3.9: DAP & Chinese Voters y = 0.606x + 29.14 R² = 0.588

Percentage of Votes Won

100 80

60

DAP Seats

40 20 0

0

50

Percentage of Chinese Voters

100

Figures 3.6–3.8 show BN and PR performances vis-à-vis Malay and Chinese voters by percentage of ethnic votes and percentage of votes secured on the Peninsula.21 Figure 3.9 shows only the DAP’s performance vis-à-vis Chinese voters. Figure 3.6 shows that BN (mainly UMNO) captured a large number of seats in the upper zones of Malay-voter constituencies of above 50 per cent. The reverse is true for PR, which performed only moderately in high Malay percentage constituencies. In the simple regression statistics shown, BN’s relationship to Malay voters is reasonably strong at 0.43, while PR’s line is negative at 0.21. The result is reversed when it comes to Chinese voters, with BN failing to secure seats with high Chinese percentages, coupled with a negative regression coefficient of 0.47. This essentially means that MCA lost the Chinese vote and rather badly. Figure 3.9 showing DAP’s performance further confirms this, with its positive steep regression line indicating a strong relationship with Chinese voters (0.59). Having said this, DAP’s performance has always been consistent on this score, as shown by previous studies (Ng, 2003). From the current figure on DAP it is also evident that it secured a significant number of seats in the mixed areas, i.e. in constituencies with Chinese percentages below 50 per cent. This has been the outcome since it joined PR. For PR as a whole, the figure shows that it won the most significant number of seats in constituencies below the 50 per cent threshold of Chinese voters. A corollary of this fact is that PR now wins most of the mixed seats. In my view, the Chinese tsunami hypothesis alludes only to a partial truth.



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CONCLUSION Malaysia’s 13th general election proved to be a significant development in the onward trajectory of electoral democracy and has provided further evidence of path-dependent tracking of twin-coalition electoral politics. This said, in terms of actual political significance and impact the 2008 outcome represented more of a critical juncture of political change towards two-coalition tracking. However, 2013 did mark a further progressive technical breach of a 50 per cent popular vote count for the opposition, but this was not meaningful in terms of capturing federal power. Furthermore, when one examines a deeper level of political developments, there are strong indications of what I have termed an electoral impasse between the BN and PR coalitions because their respective power-sharing models are found wanting after two crucial general elections in 2008 and 2013. Both sides appeared to have successfully exploited ethnic sensibilities and rural and urban voting inclinations to an optimal degree, given the structural constraints of each coalition and its partnerships. A rural–urban divide that appears to be deeply embedded in Malaysia’s current configuration of electoral politics aggravates this impasse. Gerrymandering and rural weighting will ensure that BN will not fail too badly in most elections, while PR seems to have maxed out its penetration of rural areas unless it secures new partnerships with political parties, particularly in Sabah and Sarawak. The current electoral outcome also creates a legitimacy crisis for a failing model of consociationalism long implemented by BN. Its non-Malay Peninsular parties have begun to lose political relevance and possibly their raison d’être. Pakatan, meanwhile, fails to step into the breach mostly because of its dismal capabilities in East Malaysia and its still overall weakness in rural constituencies in the Peninsula.

References Abdillah Noh (2013) ‘Malaysia and the Consociational Option: Is There a Path Dependent Logic?’, Working Paper No. 2013/1, Tun Abdul Razak School of Government, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak. Chin, James (2013) ‘Chinese Tsunami or Urban Revolt? It is Both Actually’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 102(6): 499–501.

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Crouch, Harold (1996) Government and Politics in Malaysia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Furnivall, J.S. (1948) Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kahn, S. Joel and Francis Loh Kok Wah (1992) Fragmented Vision: Culture and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Khoo, Philip (2008) ‘A New Dawn?’, Aliran Monthly, 28(4). Lee Hock Guan (2013) ‘Steadily Amplified Rural Votes Decide Malaysian Elections’, ISEAS Perspective, No. 34, 6 June. Liew Chin Tong (2013) ‘The Dominoes in Johor’, The Malaysian Insider, 13 January, http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/the-dominos-in-johorliew-chin-tong (accessed 14 January 2015). Lijphart, Arend (1977) Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration, New Haven: Yale University Press. Loh Kok Wah (2003) ‘Developmentalism versus Reformism: The Contest for Bukit Bendera, 1999’, in Francis Loh and Johan Saravanamuttu (eds), New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 158–77. Maznah Mohamad and Wong Soak Koon (eds) (2001) Risking Malaysia: Culture, Politics and Identity, Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Milne, R. Stephen and Diane K. Mauzy (1980) Politics and Government in Malaysia, Singapore: Times Books International. Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani (2009) ‘The Emergence of New Politics in Malaysia: From Consociational to Deliberative Democracy’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 2(2): 97–125. Ng Tien Eng (2003) ‘The Contest for Chinese Votes: Politics of Negotiation or Politics of Reform?’, in Francis Loh and Johan Saravanamuttu (eds), New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 87–106. Ooi Kee Beng, Johan Saravanamuttu and Lee Hock Guan (2008) March 8: Eclipsing May 13, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Pierson, Paul (2000) ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics’, The American Political Science Review, 94(2): 251–67. ——— (2004) Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Ratnam, K.J. (1965) Communalism and the Political Process in Malaya, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Reilly, Benjamin (2006) Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the AsiaPacific, New York: Oxford University Press. Saravanamuttu, Johan (2012) ‘Twin Coalition Politics in Malaysia since 2008: A Path Dependent Framing and Analysis’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 34(1): 101–27.



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——— (2013a) ‘A People’s Victory’, Aliran Monthly, 33(3). ——— (2013b) ‘The March 2008 General Election in Malaysia as a Historical Conjuncture’, in N. Ganesan (ed.), Conjunctures and Continuities in Southeast Asian Politics, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Notes 1

Beyond the plural society, see the cultural approach advocated by Kahn and Loh (1992). An effort to look beyond ethnicity and yet not ignore it is Maznah and Wong (2001). 2 See, for example, Mohd Azizuddin (2009) who argues that the consociational model has been supplanted by a form of ‘deliberative democracy’ under the tenure of Najib Razak but suggests that this move is a mask for authoritarianism. Abdillah Noh (2013), taking a long (path-dependent) historical view, maintains that consociationalism has been the most rational and stable form of Malaysian political practice in that its institutional arrangements have been more effective that those based on ‘integration’ or ‘partition’. I am broadly in agreement with the second perspective although I use path dependence analysis for a particular understanding of an electoral politics post-Independence as indicated further below. 3 See Lee’s chapter in this volume. 4 The notion of ‘increasing returns’ is derived from path dependence theorising. See Pierson (2000, 2004) and my own exposition in an earlier article (Saravanamuttu 2012: 102–3). 5 I have made this point in several articles. The one that deals extensively with the notion of critical conjunctures is found in Saravanamuttu (2013b). 6 See chapter by Lee in this volume and Lee (2013). 7 The Alliance had already won 10 seats in Sabah unopposed on polling day. The general election was suspended in Sabah and Sarawak after the May 13 riots but held later from 21–27 June. Many of the Borneo parties later joined Alliance to form Barisan Nasional (BN), its successor, to boost the ruling coalition’s Parliamentary majority to two-thirds of the seats. 8 See, for example, Lee (2013). 9 For further detailing of how the rural vote is heavily dependent on the FELDA vote bank see the chapters by Khor and Maznah. 10 See Carolyn Hong, The Sunday Times, 17 February 2013. 11 There were numerous reports including video footage of the fracas on 5 May. See, for example, http://www.kinitv.com/channel/8/Nb4TyLW3YVM?ModPagespeed =noscript (accessed 3 October 2013).

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12 When

I spoke with the popular ‘Dr Dzul’ just before the election at the PAS headquarters in Kuala Lumpur (on 25 March 2013), he appeared quietly confident of victory in the seat he wrested from UMNO in 2008 with a majority of 862 votes. Dr Dzul is noted for his moderate views and is thought to be part of the ‘Erdogan’ wing of PAS. 13 As stated on its website, Politweet is a non-partisan research firm analysing interactions among Malaysians using social media. It has been monitoring politics and activism on Twitter since 2009 and expanded to include Facebook in December 2012 (http://www.politweet.org/site/aboutus.php, accessed 1 October 2013). 14 I have revised slightly Politweet’s language to make the categories clearer. 15 See http://politweet.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-rural-urban-divide-inmalaysias-general-election/#more-321 (accessed 1 October 2013) 16 See, for example, the special issue of The Roundtable, edited by Chin (2013), particular the articles by Chin and Case. 17 See, for example, the article, ‘Young voters may call the shots in Malaysia polls’ by Yong Yen Nie in The Straits Times, 5 April 2013. 18 Indeed Loh did mention that the pro-DAP young voter thesis did not hold in areas with higher proportion of Malay: Batu Ferringhi, Tanjong Tokong, Jalan Batu Gantung, Barrack Road and Bangkok Lane. See Loh (2003: 171). 19 I would like to acknowledge my thanks to YB Charles Santiago for providing me with these data. 20 There will be the odd instance when older voters would have registered late. 21 The Election Commission provides data on Malay and Chinese voters only for the Peninsula; there are no Malay vote statistics for Sarawak and Sabah.



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

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Chapter 4

Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia1 Lee Hock Guan

In Malaysia, an electoral authoritarian regime has been in power since political independence in 1957. Wong, Chin and Norani (2010: 921) aptly characterised the regime in Malaysia as an ‘electoral one-party state’ where a dominant ruling coalition has won all elections held since political independence and is habitually ‘equated with the state’. The electoral oneparty state has three key features: (i) opposition parties are allowed but constrained; (ii) ‘state controlled or manipulation of elections’, and (iii) state-party boundaries are blurred (ibid.).2 Thus elections in Malaysia, held regularly since 1955, are competitive but not clean and free as the authoritarian state engineers the electoral system to ensure victories for the ruling coalition. Indeed, elections are subjected ‘to state manipulation so severe, widespread, and systematic that they do not qualify as democratic’ (Schedler, 2006: 3). Often, electoral authoritarian regimes maintain Parliamentary dominance by altering facets of the electoral system to match the ruling parties’ vote distribution to optimise their chances of winning more seats with the same number of votes. The tactics adopted by electoral authoritarians to advantage their parties include gerrymandering and malapportionment of constituencies. Gerrymandering and mal-apportionment create disproportionality and bias in election outcomes because the allocation of seats is unequal to the distribution of votes across parties. In first-past-the post systems, which invariably advantage the bigger parties, severe mal-apportionment of the electoral system can result in ruling parties losing the popular vote but winning the election. 63

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This chapter will begin with a discussion of the partisan delineation of the first-past-the-post electoral system in Malaysia. Since independence in 1957, the ruling coalition has strategically manipulated the successive re-delineation of the electoral constituencies to its advantage. Malapportionment and gerrymandering have been deployed in the redelineation of constituencies to amplify the ruling coalition’s – UMNO in particular – electoral dominance. Secondly, political expediency, racial demography and serendipity during the decolonisation years led to the emergence of an electoral one-multiethnic coalition party state in Malaysia. Ethnic voting created and entrenched ethnic-based parties which, in turn – to gain political support – manipulated primordial ethnic ties and fear of ethnic outsiders to ensure that voting choice became, and remains, bounded by ethnicity. For this chapter, constituencies by ethnic type are divided into three categories: ethnic-dominant seats where voters from a single ethnic group make up 70 per cent or more of the total electorate; ethnic-majority seat where voters from a single ethnic group make up 50 to less than 70 per cent of the total electorate; and mixed seats where no single ethnic group of voters exceeds 50 per cent of the total electorate.

A BIASED FIRST-PAST-THE-POST ELECTORAL SYSTEM In Malaysia, unfavourable political conditions have thwarted the actualisation of the principle of one person, one vote of equal value. Elections conducted prior to political independence were held in the context of a limited universal suffrage.3 Pre-independence elections were conducted in a predominantly Malay electorate which assured Malays that they would not be outnumbered in the legislatures. Subsequent adoption of a first-past-the post voting system, coupled with a rural weighted policy, further strengthened the pro-Malay bias of the electoral system. But, after the 1999 election, when a sizable Malay vote went against BN-UMNO, the constituency re-delineation exercise in 2002 coupled the Malay-biased apportionment of seats with a BN-bias that exploited the ruling coalition’s vote-pooling advantage over the opposition parties. In November 1953 Donald MacGillivray, then Deputy High Commissioner of Malaya, suggested a proportional representation system to ensure the equality of votes as well as to protect the minority voters, but



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

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it was quickly rejected on the ground that it would be ‘too complex for use’ in Malaya (CO 1022/86, no. 87 in Stockwell, 1995: 11). Afterwards, the Constituency Delineation Commission, or Merthyr Commission (MC), was asked to adopt ‘single member constituencies … in the rural areas’ and consider ‘multiple member constituencies … in any urban district’ (MC, 1954: 1). The rationale for multiple-member constituencies in urban districts was that a multi-member scheme would assure minority voter representation. However, the MC rejected the multiple-member constituencies proposal and recommended a single-member constituency, or first-past-the-post, system (ibid.: 9–10). The terms of reference given to the MC also stipulated the apportionment of Malaya into 52 seats of approximately equal number of inhabitants,4 and to grant ‘weightage’ to rural seats to the extent that a rural constituency could have as few as half of the electorate found in the more populous urban constituencies. Thus the 1955 delineation exercise allowed ‘a maximum weightage of 2 to 1 in terms of population – or a variation of plus or minus one third or 33 per cent from the average constituency population’ (Wong et al., 2010: 932). The MC created an electoral system with fairly equal-sized constituencies; the largest constituency was about three times bigger than the smallest (MC, 1954: 36).5 While the MC acknowledged the race factor, it proceeded to delineate ‘constituencies wholly [ignoring] racial considerations’ (MC, 1954: 4). Not only was the issue of minority representation in the elected legislature ignored, the MC also did not take into account the ‘federal citizen statistics’ which would have made known the ‘relative Malay, Chinese and Indian voting strengths in the constituencies devised and thus to forecast the representation each community may expect to secure in the legislature’ (Carnell, 1954: 230). The limited citizenship eligibility under the 1948 Federation Agreement effectively denied a majority of Chinese and Indians the right to vote. The end result was that the registered electorate in 1955 was composed of 84 per cent Malays, 11 per cent Chinese and about 5 per cent Indians; Malay voters outnumbered non-Malay voters in all but two of the 52 constituencies (Carnell, 1955: 317). But, as part of their electoral pact, UMNO allowed its allies MCA and MIC to contest in 17 constituencies and their victory in 15 of the constituencies was clearly due to UMNO’s ability to deliver the Malay vote. In brief, the Alliance’s massive victory in the 1955 election was more ‘a Malay rather than a Malayan victory’ (ibid.: 316).

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The Reid Commission (RC), tasked with drawing up the constitution for an independent Malay(si)a, was also directed to establish an electoral system. To delineate constituencies and prepare electoral rolls, it recommended the establishment of a 3-member constitutional body – the Election Commission (EC) of Malay(si)a. And to make certain that the EC was ‘completely independent and impartial’ it recommended that: (i) it should be a permanent body; (ii) its members should be appointed by the King; (iii) the members should be ‘persons in who all democratic parties and all communities have complete confidence’; (iv) the members ‘can only be removed from office in the manner provided with regard to a Judge of the Supreme Court’; and (v) their ‘salaries shall be a charge on the Consolidated Fund’ (RC, 1957: 27–8). In the founding Merdeka Constitution, the EC was solely responsible for the delineation of seats where ‘no parliamentary approval was required and the RC merely made an Order to give effect to its delimitation’ (Rachagan, 1993: 52). The RC also insisted that ‘the main object of delimitation is to ensure that so far as practicable every vote is of equal value’ (RC, 1957: 28). To ensure that each person’s vote was equally weighed and to limit malapportionment due to weightage to rural seats, the RC limited disparities between seats to within 15 per cent above or below the average constituency electorate in each state (ibid.: 29). The 15 per cent limit more than halved the amount of rural weightage previously allowed in the MC and would uphold, as much as possible, the equal value of every vote. To secure an evenhanded ethnic balance, it proposed ‘apportioning an equitable distribution of constituencies among the states on the basis of both population and electorate’ (Lim, 2003: 28). The RC’s constituency apportionment was fairer than the MC’s, but remained ethnically unequal. In the 1959 election the number of seats was doubled by simply splitting the 52 seats of 1955 into 104 seats. With the enactment of the Merdeka Constitution, more Indians and Chinese acquired citizenship status and, by extension, their proportion of the electorate increased. Smith (1960: 40) estimated the breakdown of the electorate in 1959 by ethnicity to be 57 per cent Malays, 36 per cent Chinese and 7 per cent Indians. This change in the ethnic composition of the electorate led to heated negotiations within Alliance over the coalition’s candidacy list. With the Chinese vote increased to 36 per cent of the electorate, MCA demanded a third of the total seats



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(35 seats). In contrast, UMNO’s proposed candidate list was 75 Malays, 27 Chinese and 2 Indians, a proportion similar to the 1955 election. The compromised list reflected an UMNO triumph over its partners: 69 UMNO, 31 MCA and 4 MIC candidates. Unlike in the 1955 election when the Alliance garnered nearly 80 per cent of the vote and won all the seats bar one, in the 1959 election it won 51.5 per cent of the votes, which translated into 73 out of the 100 seats contested.6 The Alliance lost to PAS in Kelantan and Terengganu, but won a majority of the Malay vote in the other states. In Penang, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan and Malacca, the Alliance lost a majority of the Chinesedominant seats to the Socialist Front, PPP and independent candidates – usually ex-MCA members (NSTP Research and Information Services, 1994). The coalition won all ethnic-majority and mixed constituencies largely due to vote pooling. In other words, outside of Kelantan and Terengganu, the Alliance won all the Malay-dominant and -majority seats,7 most of the Chinese-majority seats, and all the mixed seats. In Chinese-dominant seats the Alliance was defeated by non-Malay opposition parties which won by garnering a majority of the Chinese vote. Not surprisingly, UMNO was displeased with the EC’s 1960 redelineation proposals which, among other things, reduced the rural weightage advantage.8 Following the Merdeka Constitution’s 15 per cent limit rule, the EC delineated constituencies of ‘near parity in the number of electors’ which reduced the weightage favouring rural seats, thereby equalising to a certain extent the value of every vote (Rachagan, 1993: 56). UMNO was the party which would have been most negatively affected by the proposed 1960 delineation as the Malay-dominated rural seats were its fixed deposit seats outside of Kelantan and Terengganu. MCA and MIC approved UMNO’s rejection of the 1960 re-delineation proposals and agreed to amend the constitution to weaken the EC’s authority and autonomy (Lim, 2003: 30–2).9 One amendment transferred to the legislature the power to apportion seats into the hands of ‘a transient majority of Parliament whose temptation to gerrymander districts and manipulate the varying possibilities between “rural” and “urban” constituencies for political advantage is manifest’ (Harry E. Groves, quoted in Rachagan, 1993: 58). Since then, the delimitation of seats has fallen into the hands of the party in power – the UMNO-dominated coalition – and the electoral system has been regularly manipulated to advantage BN-UMNO.

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In 1962 UMNO abandoned the RC’s 15 per cent rural weightage and reverted to the MC’s 35 per cent limit. After the Alliance’s dismal performance in the 1969 election, UMNO proceeded to manipulate the redelimitation of constituencies to its advantage. In 1973 the equality of votes was further weakened by removing the requirement of ‘approximate equality of constituency electors by state’ and ‘equal electorates among constituencies within states’ (Lim, 2003: 33).10 Constitutional limit to rural weightage was completely removed in 1973 (ibid.). Since 1973 electoral delineation rules allow rural weightage without clearly limiting it, which thus opened the door for UMNO to mal-apportion seats to enhance Malay domination in general and UMNO’s electoral supremacy in particular. An erosion of Malay electoral support for BN in the 1999 election prodded UMNO to revert to manipulating the re-delineation exercise in 2002 to mitigate the problem of Malay vote swings against BN and to take advantage of the opposition parties’ inability to overcome the ethnic voting barrier. To benefit BN-UMNO, the 2002 re-delineation exercise raised the number of Malay-majority and mixed seats; this included converting Malaydominant seats in selected states into Malay-majority constituencies.11 For example, in Kedah, Ong and Welsh (2005) demonstrated that the 2002 redelineation exercise, to reduce risks for BN-UMNO, shifted UMNO’s Malay stronghold districts around, raising the number of non-Malay voters to reduce the Malay majority and transforming Malay-majority seats into – or creating – new mixed Malay constituencies, at both Parliament and state levels.

THE ETHNIC PARTY SYSTEM IN MALAYSIA In Malaysia, voting choice has become circumscribed by ethnicity because political parties, especially UMNO, chose to mobilise affective ethnic ties and fear of and prejudice towards ethnic outsiders and to disburse, since 1970, public patronage and rewards via ethnic-based policies. When ethnic voting prevails, it reduces competition for electoral support to within ethnic groups and not across ethnic group lines. Conversely, the prevalence of ethnic voting marginalises parties which organise and campaign along nonethnic lines. An ethnic party system accordingly emerged in Malaysia as ‘each party, recognizing that it cannot count on defections from members of the other ethnic groups, has the incentive to solidify the support of its own group’ (Horowitz, 1985: 318).



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Political configurations, especially during the decolonisation period in the 1950s, led to the formation of an ethnic party system characterised by a dominant multi-ethnic ruling coalition opposed by other ethnic parties.12 The ruling coalition began as the Alliance Party,13 which was a coalition ‘of ethnic parties, each of which can still profess to be working for the interests of its own ethnic group even while participating in the coalition’ (Horowitz, 1985: 396). The Alliance’s formula was stumbled upon by UMNO and MCA in the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal election (Carnell, 1954; Goh, 2005). The two parties, recognising that society was racially segregated and that ‘voting is likely to be on a wholly communal basis’, pooled their respective ethnic group support and put up UMNO candidates in Malay wards and MCA candidates in Chinese wards (Carnell, 1954: 222). This vote-pooling strategy helped UMNO and MCA to convincingly defeat the Independence of Malaya Party (IMP) which had pursued a non-ethnic political platform. This was because the coalition gained from vote pooling by allowing each component party to cast itself as an ethnic party representing the interests of its own ethnic group while remaining in a multi-ethnic coalition. Nevertheless, as the electorate was predominantly Malay in the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal election, the coalition won mainly because UMNO delivered a large majority of the Malay vote. In the first general election held in 1955, the UMNO-MCA coalition again benefited from vote pooling and won 54 of the 55 seats contested (Carnell, 1955). Three salient political facts became evident after the 1952 Kuala Lumpur municipal and 1955 general elections: (i) UMNO was indisputably the paramount component party in the Alliance; (ii) to win elections it was necessary to win a majority of the Malay vote; and (iii) vote pooling was the only way to overcome ethnic voting. In early 1959 a number of MCA leaders challenged UMNO’s paramount status in the coalition and demanded more parity in seat apportionment for the upcoming general election. MCA’s demand was prompted by the fact that more Chinese would gain citizenship status under the 1957 Merdeka Constitution terms. However, Tunku Abdul Rahman, then UMNO president, rejected MCA’s demand which, in due course, precipitated the resignation of Lim Chong Eu, then MCA president, and his supporters from the party (Smith, 1960: 42). UMNO reasserted its pre-eminent position in the Alliance and allocated for itself a disproportionate share of the seats contested by the coalition in the 1959 general election.

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In West Malaysia, winning the Malay vote was, and is, indispensable to winning elections as Malays constitute the majority vote; this is further amplified by the rural weightage policy in the apportionment of constituencies. As Malays comprise a majority of the rural population, the rural weightage policy created unequal value of votes across rural– urban constituencies and across ethnic voters favourable to the Malay vote. Historically, the rural weightage devalued the Chinese vote as the majority of Chinese resided in the urban areas and dominated the large urban constituencies. Since the 1990s, voter composition of large urban seats has become more ethnically diverse as a result of the increasing intra- and inter-state migration from the lower-income rural regions to the higher-income urban centres, increasing urbanisation, differential ethnic population growth, and public policies to uplift the Malay community led to the migration of large numbers of Malays to the urban regions. In 1970 15 per cent of the Malay population was urban, but this had increased to 67 per cent by 2010. Thus Malays constituted 27.4 per cent of the urban population in 1970, but 56.7 per cent by 2010 (Malaysia, 2011). Accordingly, the number of large Malay-dominated urban seats has increased so there is now a devaluation of the urban Malay vote relative to the rural Malay vote. UMNO has evolved into the pre-eminent Malay party, and the ruling coalition has profited from vote pooling and consistently winning a majority of the Malay vote. In ethnic-dominant seats, vote pooling is less crucial in determining outcomes since intra-ethnic outbidding occurs when two intraethnic parties vie for the support of the same ethnic group. Historically, BN would only encounter competitive opposition in a small percentage of ethnic-dominant seats. Since 1969 UMNO has faced intense rivalry from PAS in Malay-dominant seats in Kelantan and Terengganu, and MCA and Gerakan from DAP in all the Chinese-dominant seats. To defeat opposition Malay parties in Malay-dominant seats, UMNO only needs to win a majority of the Malay vote. In contrast, in Chinese-dominant seats Gerakan and MCA have frequently lost to DAP as they usually failed to win a majority of the Chinese vote. Before 2008, in the ethnic-majority seats and mixed seats, vote pooling benefited BN as the opposition ethnic parties failed to obtain votes across ethnic lines. BN’s electoral success was largely because, as a multi-ethnic coalition, it could, time and again, capture the middle ground and thereby



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

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reduce the opposition ethnic parties to challenging the coalition at the ethnic ‘flanks’ of the political spectrum (Horowitz, 1985: Chapter 10). In other words, until the 2008 election, to win votes the opposition parties devolved into an ethnic outbidding contest which resulted in their adopting more ethnically, or alleged to be ethnically, extreme positions. As a result, the opposition parties could mostly appeal to one ethnic group while failing to convince the other ethnic groups to vote for them. In the past, after each electoral setback UMNO, besides manipulating the electoral system, had successfully deployed coercion, co-option and collaboration strategies to fragment and weaken the opposition, including civil society groups. After the Alliance’s dismal electoral performance in 1969, the ensuing race riots on 13 May enabled UMNO leaders to opportunistically manipulate the crisis to forge a new multi-ethnic coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN), in 1974. UMNO broadened BN’s nonMalay electoral base by co-opting the then opposition parties PPP, Gerakan and especially PAS (1974–78) into the new coalition. Since independence in 1957, PAS has continually been a formidable opponent to UMNO in Kelantan and, to some extent, Terengganu. Before 1974 the Alliance managed to win a majority of the Malay vote in all the states except Kelantan and Terengganu; UMNO lost to PAS in Kelantan in 1959, 1964 and 1969 and Terengganu in 1959. After the 1969 riots, UMNO co-opted PAS to join BN from 1974 to 1978, and when PAS split from BN in 1978 a breakaway PAS faction formed BERJASA which then joined BN in December 1978. In coalition with BERJASA (1978–89), Hizbul Muslimin14 (1986–89) and other former PAS leaders, BN won Kelantan in the 1978, 1982 and 1986 general elections. Kelantan became, however, a casualty of the UMNO split between Mahathir Mohamad and Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah in 1987 after a heated leadership struggle (Khoo, 1992). The defeated Razaleigh led a breakaway UMNO faction to establish the Malay party Semangat 46, which was registered in 1989. As Razaleigh was the then undisputed leader of UMNO Kelantan, his and his supporters’ departure from UMNO deprived the party of strong Malay electoral support in the state. Indeed, since the 1990 election UMNO has failed to win back the state from PAS even after Razaleigh disbanded Segamat 46 and re-joined UMNO in 1996. In other words, from 1990 onwards BN has failed to win a majority of the Malay vote in Kelantan.

72

Coalitions in Collision

Historically then, the ethnic voting pattern in Malaysia has benefited BN, especially UMNO, in ethnic-majority and mixed seats. As a coalition of ethnic parties, BN can reach out to all the three ethnic groups, unlike the opposition parties whose support largely comes from one ethnic group. BN, through UMNO, has consistently won a majority of the Malay vote except for Kelantan where PAS has remained the dominant party since the 1990 election. In contrast, DAP has won a majority of the Chinese vote in all the states except Johor, where it has failed to dislodge MCA as the leading Chinese party. For BN, the Indian vote was one of its fixed deposit vote banks as the coalition, without fail, garnered a big majority of the Indian vote. The ruling coalition thus has managed to win a majority of the Malay vote and benefited from vote pooling by skilfully manipulating ethnic sentiments and loyalties and their fears and prejudices, by its patronage system and, to a certain extent, by performing well in growing the economy which has benefited all ethnic groups. Recognising the BN vote-pooling advantage, opposition parties have made attempts to overcome it by forming multi-ethnic coalitions of their own. In 1989 the Razaleigh-led Semangat 46 formed a Malay-Muslim coalition Angkatan Perpaduan Ummah (APU) with PAS, BERJASA and Hizbul Muslimin. In 1990 Semangat 46 formed a multi-ethnic coalition Gagasan Rakyat with DAP, Indian Progressive Front, Kongres Indian Muslim Malaysia, Party Rakyat Malaysia (PRM), BERJASA, Hizbul Muslimin and Parti Bersatu Sabah. However, in the 1990 election APU and Gagasan both failed to overcome the ethnic voting barrier as their candidates were defeated in all the Malay- and Chinese-majority and mixed seats in West Malaysia. Both APU and Gagasan folded not long after the 1990 election. For the 1999 election, five major opposition parties – PAS, DAP, Keadilan, PRM and PBS – came together to form the multi-ethnic coalition Barisan Alternatif (BA).15 In that election a diametrically opposing direction of the Malay and Chinese vote swing again demonstrated the inability of the opposition parties to overcome the ethnic voting barrier (Maznah, 2003; Ng, 2003). In 1999 there was a sizable Malay vote swing across all states in favour of PAS and Keadilan – but not DAP. Even then, BN still won a majority of the Malay votes in all the states except Kelantan and Terengganu, where it lost to BA, specifically PAS. Thus in 1999 BN’s ethnic vote-pooling advantage



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

73

enabled the coalition to win nearly all the Malay- and Chinese-majority and mixed seats as most Malays still would not vote for DAP and the Chinese for PAS or Keadilan. Most importantly, the BA fell apart shortly after the 1999 election. However, in the 2008 election the opposition parties formed an informal coalition, after the election constituted as PR, and put up a single opposition candidate to contest against the BN candidate in almost every seat in West Malaysia. For the first time in electoral history, the opposition parties gained from vote pooling and won large numbers of ethnic-majority and mixed constituencies (Ooi et al., 2008). Sizable numbers of Malay, Chinese and Indian voters overcame the ethnic barrier to cast their vote for the opposition – Malay voters for DAP and Chinese and Indian voters for PKR and PAS. Thus BN finally lost its monopoly over vote pooling. In East Malaysia, where Malay voters constitute a minority, UMNO has strategically formed varying political pacts with the regional Bumiputera groups and, until recently, also with the East Malaysian Chinese communities. Thus, although UMNO is absent from Sarawak, through BN it has co-opted and collaborated with the regional political parties such as Parti Pesaka Bumiputera (PBB), Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), Sarawak National Party (SNAP) and Parti Bangsa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) to win successive elections (Chin, 1996; Khoo, 2004; Aeria, 2005). In Sabah, UMNO has managed to penetrate the state by initially forming political pacts, varying over time, with Sabah-based parties – United Sabah National Organisation (USNO) and Bersatu Rakyat Jelata Sabah (BERJAYA) – and then establishing UMNO-Sabah in 1991. An essentially Muslim Bumiputera party, UMNO-Sabah deployed a variety of strategies, mostly with the connivance of UMNO’s national leaders, to neutralise the largely Christian Kadazandusun, such as illegally granting citizenship status to Muslim migrants from the southern Philippines and Indonesia, by systemically converting animistic non-Muslim Bumiputeras to Islam, and by the divide and rule of the Kadazandusun (Ross-Larson, 1976; Luping, 2004; Loh, 2009: 121–71). Apart from DAP which periodically won a significant percentage of the Chinese vote in Sabah and Sarawak, other opposition parties from West Malaysia have failed to garner support from the Bumiputera groups of Sabah and Sarawak.

74

Coalitions in Collision

MAL-APPORTIONMENT AND UMNO-MALAY DOMINANCE Gerrymandering and mal-apportionment of constituencies have been deployed in successive constituency delimitation exercises to amplify Malay electoral power and entrench UMNO’s rule. The BN-UMNO-controlled constituency delimitation exercise took into account: (i) BN-UMNO usually garners a majority of the Malay vote in all states except Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah; (ii) PAS’s real threat in Malay-dominant seats in the Malay heartland states; (iii) DAP’s threat in Chinese-dominant seats; and (iv) BN’s vote-pooling advantage. Before the 1999 election, BN’s dominance was achieved by forming a disproportionate percentage of Malay-dominant and majority seats, but after the sizable Malay vote swing against BN-UMNO in the 1999 election, the 2002 seat delineation exercise was used to maximise BN’s vote-pooling advantage by creating more Malay-majority and mixed constituencies. Table 4.1: Mal-apportionment of Constituencies by Electorate Size in Peninsular Malaysia*(selected election years) Year

Smallest

Largest

Largest/smallest

1959

10986

35549

3.23

1969

18302

81086

4.43

1974

9190

51534

5.61

1986

12171

81005

6.66

1999

16018

98527

6.15

2004

23061

104185

4.52

2013

27950

144369

5.17

Source: adapted from Wong et al. (2010). * Excluding Putrajaya

Table 4.1 shows that the largest seat was about 3.2 times bigger than the smallest seat in 1959 when the disparities between rural and urban seats was capped at 35 per cent deviation. Since the removal of the limit on rural weightage in 1972, the disparity between largest and smallest constituencies has increasingly widened over successive elections; the largest/smallest seat ratio increased from 5.6 times in 1974 to 6.7 in 1986, 6.2 in 1999 and 5.17 in 2013.16 In 2013 all the Parliamentary seats with more than 100,000



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

75

voters in West Malaysia were located in the urban region: nine in Selangor,17 three in Johor18 and one in Negeri Sembilan.19 With the migration of large numbers of Malays to the urban regions, out of the 13 largest seats only one was a Chinese-majority seat while there were one Malay-dominant seat, two Malay-majority seats and nine mixed seats. In contrast, the 12 smallest seats were all rural seats (not counting Putrajaya), had fewer than 40,000 voters, and nine of them were Malay-dominant seats. The use of electoral delineation to enhance UMNO dominance is illustrated in the over-representation of seats where the Malay vote makes up 50 per cent or more of the total electorate (Table 4.2). In 1964 60 out of the 104 total seats were such seats, comprising 57.6 per cent of the total. Since Malays made up 54.4 per cent of the total electorate, they were over-represented by 1.06 times. After the coalition’s disastrous electoral performance in 1969, the electoral delineation drastically increased Malay over-representation to 1.20 times. After the 1999 election when a significant Malay vote swung in favour of PAS and Keadilan, UMNO used the 2002 redelineation exercise to increase the number of Malay-majority and especially mixed seats. In the 2013 election Malay over-representation was 1.16 times due to the proportionally larger increase in the number of mixed seats. Table 4.2: Malay-dominated Parliamentary Constituencies in Peninsular Malaysia (selected election years) Total Percentage of Percentage of Malay number seats with 50 of seats per cent and electorate above Malay voters

Overrepresentation ratio

Election year

Number of seats with 50 per cent and above Malay voters

1964

60

104

57.6

54.4

1.06

1974

79

114

69.3

57.9

1.20

1986

92

132

69.7

55.3

1.26

1999

98

144

68.1

56.7

1.20

2013

113

165

68.5

59.1

1.16

Sources: modified from Lim (2005) and Wong et al. (2010).

Similarly, UMNO’s Bumiputera allies in East Malaysia have gained from the mal-apportionment of seats (Table 4.3). In 2013 24 out of 26 total seats

76

Coalitions in Collision

in Sabah (including Labuan) were Bumiputera-dominant seats, comprising 92.3 per cent of the total. Given that Bumiputeras constituted 79.4 per cent of the total electorate, this meant that they were over-presented by 1.16 times. In Sarawak, Bumiputera-dominant seats made up 80.6 per cent of the total, thus giving the community an over-representation of 1.22 times. Table 4.3: Bumiputera-dominated Parliamentary Constituencies in East Malaysia, 2013 Percentage of Bumiputera electorate

Overrepresentation ratio

92.3

79.4

1.16

80.6

66.1

1.22

Total Percentage of number Bumiputera of seats dominated seats

State

Number of Bumiputera dominated seats

Sabah

24

26

Sarawak

25

31

Source: Calculated from Malaysian election data 2013. Note: Bumiputera-dominated seat means Bumiputeras comprise 50 per cent or more of the total electorate.

Tables 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 show the distribution of electoral constituencies by ethnic type and electoral size20 in the Malay states (Kelantan, Terengganu, Perlis, Kedah), central states (Penang, Perak, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur) and southern states (Pahang, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca, Johor). Based on UMNO’s ability to win a majority of the Malay vote in all states except Kelantan, as a result of the 2002 delineation exercise there were 66 Malaydominant seats (40 per cent of the total) and 47 Malay-majority seats (28.5 per cent) in the 2013 election. Mixed seats, in which BN traditionally had an advantage because of vote pooling, constituted 17.6 per cent of the seats. Chinese-dominant and -majority seats represented only 6.7 per cent and 7.3 per cent respectively of the total seats and, as usual, there were no Indian-dominant or -majority seats. In terms of the distribution of seats by electorate size, in ascending electoral size, there were 26.7 per cent seats with 50,000 or fewer voters, 21.8 per cent with 50,001–65,000 voters, 21.9 per cent seats with 65,001–80,000 voters, and 29.6 per cent seats with more than 80,000 voters. The distribution of seats by electoral size shows the widening inequalities between rural and urban votes; most seats with fewer than 50,000 voters were rural seats, while those with more than 80,000 voters were urban seats.



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

77

RESULTS OF THE 2013 ELECTION In the 13th general election the opposition coalition PR21 won 50.85 per cent of the popular vote but only 89 parliament seats (40.09 per cent of the total). In contrast, though garnering 46.87 per cent of the popular vote, BN won 133 federal seats, thus retaining Parliamentary control with 59.91 per cent of the seats. BN indeed won only 45.55 per cent of the popular vote and 51.55 per cent of the seats in West Malaysia, with Sabah and Sarawak together contributing nearly 30 per cent of the total number of seats won by BN. Table 4.4 shows the Merdeka Centre’s preliminary analysis of the Malay support for BN by state and stratum (rural and urban) in the 2013 election. BN-UMNO won a majority of both the rural and urban Malay vote in all states except the urban Malay vote in Kelantan and Terengganu and rural Malay vote in Kelantan. Rural Malay support for BN is higher than urban Malay support in all states except Kedah, Pahang and Penang. In Johor, UMNO’s stronghold, BN won 83.7 per cent of the rural Malay vote and 76.3 per cent of the urban Malay vote, and in Kelantan, PAS’s stronghold, BN won 45.6 per cent and 42.8 per cent respectively. Table 4.4: Percentage of Malay Votes Won by Barisan Nasional in the 13th General Election by State and Stratum Rural

Urban

Terengganu

State

53.7

47.8

Kelantan

45.6

42.8

Perlis

61.1

55.4

Kedah

54.2

54.8

Pahang

63.9

68.1

Malacca

74.4

68.6

Negeri Sembilan

74.5

54.1

Johor

83.7

76.3

Selangor

61.2

56.5

68

59.6

Perak



Kuala Lumpur

–

–

Penang

60

61.1

Source: Merdeka Centre, 2013.

78

Coalitions in Collision

Overall, the Merdeka Centre preliminary findings show that Malay support for BN increased in all states except Terengganu, Perlis, Pahang and Penang from 2008 to 2013 elections (Table 4.5). In the Malay heartland states, BN won back a majority of the Malay vote in Kedah and the Malay vote in Terengganu and Perlis albeit with decreased margins. Malay support for BN in Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang remained solid: 81.9 per cent, 72.8 per cent, 72.4 per cent and 64.3 per cent respectively. In contrast, although BN’s Malay support in Selangor, Perak and Kuala Lumpur (except Putrajaya) increased slightly, it remained at around 60 per cent, which mostly would not be sizable enough for the coalition to win the states’ majority and mixed seats. This was especially the case as BN received weak Chinese and modest Indian support; Chinese and Indian votes in Selangor, Perak and Kuala Lumpur stood at 15.9 per cent, 20.5 per cent and 12.3 per cent, and 37.6 per cent, 43.1 per cent and 37.6 per cent respectively. In general, in the states where non-Malay votes matter because of the presence of a significant number of majority and mixed seats, the very poor Chinese support coupled with the weakest Indian support for BN probably resulted in the coalition losing nearly all those seats in Selangor, Perak, Penang and Kuala Lumpur to PR. Even in Johor and Pahang BN lost its majority Chinese support to the opposition in 2013. Among the Indian vote, BN managed to win a slight majority support from that community in Pahang, Malacca and Johor, though its support in Johor fell from 65.2 per cent in 2008 to 51.6 per cent in 2013.

Malay Heartland In the Malay heartland states there were 35 Malay-dominant and five Malaymajority seats (Table 4.6). Of the 35 Malay-dominant seats, BN-UMNO won all the seven seats with 50,000 and below voters, six of the nine seats with 50,001–65,000 voters, five of the 10 seats with 65,001–80,000 voters, and two of the nine seats with more than 80,000 voters. Thus even in the Malay heartland states UMNO’s strength was in the smaller rural constituencies while the opposition PR won a majority of the semi-urban and urban Malay vote. In the five Malay-majority seats, all in Kedah, a small Malay vote swing helped UMNO to regain Kulim and Merbok, but the swing was not big enough to win back Sungai Petani and Padang Serai from PKR. In contrast, probably a split Malay vote coupled with a larger Chinese vote for PKR helped the party to wrest the Alor Setar seat from MCA.



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Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

Table 4.5: Percentage of Popular Votes Won by BarisanNasional in the 12th and 13th General Elections, by Ethnicity State

Malay vote

Malay

Chinese

Indians

2013

2008

2013

2008

2013

2008

2013

Terengganu

95.1

55.7

52.1

62.2

38.4

-

-

Kelantan

94.5

44.3

45.1

49.3

43.9

-

-

Perlis

84.4

59.3

56.2

64.9

41.5

-

-

Kedah

76.4

48.7

54.3

34.3

30.7

35.5

46.5

Pahang

69.4

64.4

64.3

51.4

23.4

48.6

51.7

Malacca

58.2

71.1

72.8

38.0

15.7

52.5

52.5

Negeri Sembilan

52.8

70.4

72.4

40.9

19.5

43.1

42.9

Johor

52.7

81.1

81.9

52.7

21.3

65.2

51.6

Selangor

49.7

55.8

58.7

36.5

15.9

38.2

37.6

Perak

48.4

59.3

60.4

41.1

20.5

47.8

43.1

Kuala Lumpur

36.7

54.1

60.5

30.1

12.3

47.8

37.6

Penang

35.2

60.5

60.1

29.3

10

46.2

31.3

Source: Merdeka Centre, 2013.

Table 4.6: Electoral Constituencies by Ethnic Type and Electorate Size in the Malay Heartland States, 2013 Voters size

Malay-dominant Seats Total

UMNO

50,000 and below

7

7

PAS

50,001– 65,000

9

6

3

65,001– 80,000

10

5

5

more than 80,000

9

2

6

Total

35

20

14

Malay-majority Seats

PKR

Total

UMNO

PAS

PKR

3

1

2

1

2

1

1

1

5

2

3

Source: Calculated from various sources including Malaysian election data, Star 13th General Election 2013 and the Sun GE13.

80

Coalitions in Collision

In Perlis, PR did not win a majority of the Malay vote and was defeated in all the three Malay-dominant seats in the state. In Kedah, the Malay vote swing favoured UMNO and helped the party to regain five Malaydominant seats (Padang Terap, Pendang, Sik, Jerai, Baling) that had been lost to PAS in 2008 and retained the Malay-dominant seats of Langkawi, Jerlun and Kubang Pasu (Table 4.6). In contrast, the Malay vote swing in Terengganu favoured PR; PAS won four out of the eight Parliamentary seats in 2013 compared to three in the 2008 election (Table 4.6). Also, PR won 15 of the 32 state seats; this was two seats short of wresting control of the state government from UMNO. In Kelantan, PAS continued to garner more Malay votes than UMNO and thus retained all the nine seats it had won in 2008. PKR, however, lost the Tanah Merah, Ketereh, Machang seats the party had won in 2008 to UMNO in 2013, in part due to split voting.22

Central Region In the central states of Penang, Perak and Selangor and the Federal Territory, PR further strengthened its ethnic vote-pooling advantage over BN which the coalition first experienced in the 2008 election. In the 2013 election, Chinese support for all PR component parties increased to around 80 per cent or more which helped the coalition to win 16 of the 17 mixed constituencies and all the Chinese-dominant (11) and -majority (8) seats (Table 4.7) in the central region states. The only mixed seat won by BN was the largely rural Tapah seat in Perak which has fewer than 50,000 voters and an ethnic electoral make-up of 46 per cent Malays, 28 per cent Chinese, 13 per cent Indians and 11 per cent Orang Asli. The incumbent, Saravanan Murugan (MIC), managed to retain this seat by winning a big majority of the Malay vote complemented by significant Indian and Orang Asli votes. There were three mixed seats with between 50,001 and 65,000 voters – Nibong Tebal (Penang), Sungai Siput (Perak) and Teluk Intan (Perak). PKR retained Nibong Tebal by winning a sizable percentage of the semi-urban and urban Malay vote and a huge majority of the Chinese vote (Tables 4.4 and 4.5). In Sungei Siput (Perak), the incumbent Michael Jeyakumar Devaraj, a socialist candidate running under the PKR banner, retained the seat with a larger victory margin than in 2008. In the Teluk Intan seat, the slight Malay swing vote in favour of BN was offset by the bigger Chinese swing vote for DAP, resulting in a bigger victory margin for DAP. For the mixed seats



81

Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

with 65,001 and more voters, the significant support from the semi-urban and urban Malay voters coupled with an overwhelming Chinese support enabled PKR to win Bayan Baru in Penang, Taiping and Gopeng in Perak, Selayang, Pandan, Puchong, Kelana Jaya, Petaling Jaya Selatan, Serdang, Subang, Klang and Kota Raya in Selangor, and Batu in the Federal Territory. Table 4.7: Electoral Constituencies by Ethnic Type and Electorate Size in Penang, Perak, Selangor and Federal Territory, 2013 Voters size

Malay dominant Total

BN

50, 000 and below

8

50,001– 65,000

Malay majority

Chinese majority

Mixed

Chinese dominant

PR Total BN PR Total BN

PR Total BN PR Total BN

8

0

4

4

0

1

1

0

1

0

1

4

4

0

5

4

1

3

0

3

2

0

2

2

0

2

65,001– 80,000

1

0

1

3

0

3

3

0

3

5

0

5

4

0

4

more than 80,000

2

0

2

8

4

4

10

0

10

5

0

5

Total

15

12

3

20

12

8

17

1

16

11

0

11

8

0

8

PR

Source: Calculated from various sources including Malaysian election data, Star 13th General Election 2013 and the Sun GE13.

The emerging gap between rural and urban Malay support for UMNO was clearly reflected in its contrasting performance in the Malay-dominant and -majority seats in Penang, Perak, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur (Table 4.7). UMNO won all the eight Malay-dominant seats with 50,000 and below voters: Grik, Lenggong, Larut, Padang Rengas and Parit in Perak, Sabak Bernam and Tanjung Karang in Selangor, and Putrajaya. All are rural constituencies except for Putrajaya which is urban but largely populated by civil servants, a strong UMNO support group. Similarly, UMNO also won all the four largely rural Malay-majority seats with 50,000 and below voters but with smaller victory margins due to the larger presence of non-Malay voters. In the larger mixed rural and urban seats with 50,001–65,000 voters, BN managed to win all the four Malay-dominant seats and four of the five

82

Coalitions in Collision

Malay-majority seats; Parit Buntar in Perak was retained by incumbent PAS’s Mujahid Yusof Rawa with a larger victory margin (8,476 votes). In the Malay-dominant (1) and -majority (3) seats with 65,001–80,000 voters, BN lost all the seats to PR (Table 4.7). However, UMNO won four of the eight Malay-majority seats with more than 80,001 voters – Hulu Selangor (Selangor), Tambun (Perak), and Setiawangsa and Titiwangsa (Federal Territory). MIC wrested back Hulu Selangor – which it had lost to PKR in 2008 – by winning a larger percentage of the Malay vote, particularly the Malay voters from the FELDA villages located in this constituency, and the Malay postal votes, and a slight Indian vote swing back to BN. UMNO retained the semi-urban Tambun on the back of strong support from the 64 per cent largely rural Malay vote. UMNO won the urban Malay-majority seats of Setiawangsa and Titiwangsa by narrow margins of 866 and 1,390 votes respectively. Indeed, UMNO victories in Setiawangsa and Titiwangsa can be attributed to the party winning a huge majority of the advance and postal votes.23 That PR managed to garner a sizable percentage of the urban Malay vote was reflected by the coalition‘s retention of the Malay-dominant seats of Shah Alam and Gombak in Selangor.

Southern Region BN continues to be overly dominant in the states of Pahang, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan and Johor where the coalition won 40 of the 54 seats contested (about 74.1 per cent) (Table 4.8). The strong Malay support for UMNO was clearly demonstrated by the party‘s victory in all the 16 Malay-dominant seats irrespective of whether they were rural or urban. UMNO also won all the nine largely rural Malay-majority seats with fewer than 50,000 voters. In the 13 Malay-majority seats with more than 50,001 voters, PR won Indera Mahkota, Kuantan and Temerloh in Pahang, Bkit Katil in Malacca and, surprisingly, Batu Pahat in Johor. The strong Malay support for BN in Johor resulted in the coalition winning 10 of the state’s 11 Malay-majority seats: Sekijang, Pagoh, Ledang, Muar, Ayer Itam, Sri Gading, Simpang Renggam, Sembrong, Johor Baru and Tanjung Piai.



Mal-apportionment and the Electoral Authoritarian Regime in Malaysia

83

Table 4.8: Electoral Constituencies by Ethnic Type and Electorate Size in Pahang, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and Johor States, 2013 Voters size

Malay dominant

Malay majority

Total BN

Total BN

PR

PR

Chinese majority

Mixed

Total BN PR Total BN PR

50, 000 and below

11

11

0

9

9

0

3

3

0

0

0

0

50,001– 65,000

3

3

0

6

4

2

2

1

1

0

0

0

65,001– 80,000

1

1

0

4

3

1

1

0

1

1

0

1

more than 80,000

1

1

0

3

1

2

6

3

3

3

0

3

Total

16

16

0

22

17

5

12

7

5

4

0

4

Source: Calculated from various sources including Malaysian election data, Star 13th General Election 2013 and the Sun GE13.

For mixed seats with fewer than 50,000 voters, MIC narrowly won Cameron Highlands by 462 votes and Segamat by 1217 votes, while MCA won Labis by 353 votes. BN’s victory in these three largely rural mixed seats was due to winning a larger percentage of the Malay vote coupled with its vote-pooling advantage. However, for mixed seats with 50,001–80,000 voters, PR won two of the three seats contested: Raub in Pahang and Teluk Kemang in Negeri Sembilan. The mixed seat of Bentong in Pahang was won narrowly by MCA’s Liow Tiong Lai whose victory margin was reduced to 379 votes in 2013 from 12,549 in 2008. Of the six mixed seats with more than 80,001 voters, DAP retained Rasah and Seremban in Negeri Sembilan with bigger majorities and wrested Kluang in Johor from MCA, while BN retained Terbau, Pasir Gudang and Pulai, all in Johor. In the Chinese-majority seats, PR retained Kota Melaka and Bakri and BN lost Kulai and Gelang Patah to DAP; Lim Kit Siang defeated Abdul Ghani Othman, former Menteri Besar of Johor, in Gelang Patah by nearly 15,000 votes.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS Political conditions and circumstances during the pre-independence period led to the growth of a dominant multi-ethnic party state in Malaysia. Ethnicity continues to circumscribe voting choice in Malaysia largely because BN persists in mobilising affective ethnic ties and, in particular, UMNO persists in playing up Malay-Muslim fear of the Chinese and nonMuslims and disbursing patronage through ethnic preferential policies. Accordingly, the entrenched ethnic politics have marginalised nonethnic parties so that political discourse and election campaigns remain circumscribed by racial and religious parameters. The principle of ‘one man, one vote of equal value’ was never adopted, especially since disproportionate ‘weightage’ to favour rural areas was incorporated into the electoral system. Since 1962, through constitutional amendments and personnel appointments, the ruling coalition has gradually exerted its control over the EC and, through the latter, manipulated the electoral system to shore up BN’s dominance. In a first-past-the-post system, ‘the manner in which the … total electorate is divided into electoral constituencies is crucially important in determining outcomes’ (Lim, 2003: 26). To consolidate its electoral dominance, BN has used gerrymandering and mal-apportionment strategies to establish an exceedingly Malaydominated electoral constituency structure, which has invariably devalued the ‘one man, one vote’ principle. UMNO in particular has utilised the two strategies to amplify its political power by allocating to Malays a greater share of legislative seats than their share of the population. The strategic manipulation includes delineating the constituency structure and make-up which enables BN-UMNO to maximise on its pattern of ethnic support, especially on UMNO’s ability to win a majority of the Malay vote and the coalition’s vote-pooling advantage. BN was more or less assured of winning in majority and mixed constituencies because of ethnic vote pooling before 2008, but since then it appears that PR has overcome the cross-ethnic voting barrier to gain from vote pooling. The 2013 results further demonstrated that PR today has an advantage over BN in the majority and mixed constituencies. Indeed, BN electoral victories in 2008 and 2013 became more dependent on the mal-apportionment of constituencies. BN’s mal-apportionment of the electoral system has widened the rural–urban voter inequalities to the extent that PR won the popular vote



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but BN won the election in GE13. BN-UMNO won 80 out of the 133 Malay-dominated seats (around 70 per cent). BN won 85 of the 165 seats in West Malaysia, which means that the Malay-dominated seats it won made up nearly 94 per cent of the total seats BN won in West Malaysia. More important is the fact that UMNO has become a party of the rural Malays since the bulk of the seats it won were the small rural Malay-dominant and -majority seats. Because of mal-apportionment of seats, theoretically, BN could have won the 2013 election with a simple majority by garnering just about 17.8 per cent of the total electoral votes.24 Indeed, the BN-UMNO electoral authoritarian state can continue to secure its grip on power by maintaining its stranglehold over the rural Malay-dominant and -majority seats in West Malaysia and with the support of the East Malaysian parties to perpetuate a minority government in Malaysia.

References Aeria, Andrew (2005) ‘Sarawak: State Elections and Political Patronage’, in Mavis Puthucheary and Norani Othman (eds), Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Brown, Graham (2005) Playing the (non) Ethnic Card: The Electoral System and Ethnic Voting Patterns in Malaysia, Oxford: CRISE Working Paper no. 21. Carnell, Francis G. (1954) ‘Constitutional Reform and Elections in Malaya’, Pacific Affairs, 27(3): 216–35. ——— (1955) ‘The Malayan Elections’, Pacific Affairs, 28(4): 315–30. Chin Ung Ho (1996) Chinese Politics in Sarawak: A Study of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Goh Ban Lee (2005) ‘The Demise of Local Government Elections and Urban Politics’, in Mavis Puthucheary and Norani Othman (eds), Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Horowitz, Donald (1985) Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley: University of California Press. Khoo, Phillip (2004) ‘The Taming of the Dayak: the PBDS Saga Continues’, Aliran Monthly no. 6. Khoo Kay Jin (1992) ‘The Grand Vision: Mahathir and modernization’, in Joel Kahn and Loh Kok Wah (eds), Fragmented Vision: Culture and Politics in Contemporary Malaysia, Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin. Lim Hong Hai (2002) ‘Electoral Politics in Malaysia: “Managing” Elections in a Plural Society’, in Aurel Croissant, Gabriele Burns and Marei John (eds),

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Electoral Politics in Southeast Asia and East Asia, Singapore: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. ——— (2003) ‘The Delineation of Peninsular Electoral Constituencies: Amplifying Malay and UMNO Power’, in Loh Kok Wah and Johan Saravanamuttu (eds), New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: ISEAS. ——— (2005) ‘Making the System Work: The Election Commission’, in Mavis Puthucheary and Norani Othman (eds), Elections and Democracy in Malaysia, Bangi, Malaysia: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Loh Kok Wah (2004) ‘Understanding the 2004 Election Results’, Aliran, 24(3). ——— (2009) Old vs New Politics in Malaysia: State and Society in Transition, Kuala Lumpur and Penang: SIRD and ALIRAN. Luping, Herman (2004) Sabah’s Dilemma: The Political History of Sabah (1960–1994), Kuala Lumpur: Magnus Books. Malaysia (2011) Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2010: Population Distribution and Basic Demographic Characteristics, Kuala Lumpur: Department of Statistics. Malaysian Election Data. www.undi.info (accessed 12 August 2013). Malaysianinsider (2013) ‘Barisan would have lost without postal, advance votes, says Merdeka Centre’, 12 August. Maznah Mohamad (2003) ‘The Contest for Malay Votes in 1999: UMNO’s Most Historic Challenge’, in Loh Kok Wah and Johan Saravanamuttu (eds), New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: ISEAS. Merdeka Centre (2013) 13th Malaysian General Election Results Parliamentary Level Analysis along Regional, Ethnic and Age Cohort Voting Patterns. ISEAS Seminar, Singapore, 4 Sept. Merthyr Commission (1954) Report of the Constituency Delineation Commission, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer. Ng Tien Eng (2003) ‘The Contest for Chinese Votes: Politics of Negotiation or Politics of Pressure?’, in Loh Kok Wah and Johan Saravanamuttu (eds), New Politics in Malaysia, Singapore: ISEAS. NSTP Research and Information Services (1994) Elections in Malaysia: A Handbook of Fact and Figures on the Elections 1955–1990, Kuala Lumpur: New Straits Times Press (NSTP). Ong Kian Ming and Bridget Welsh (2005) ‘Electoral Delimitation: A Case Study of Kedah’ in Mavis Puthucheary and Norani Othman (eds), Elections and Democracy in Malaysia. Bangi, Malaysia: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Ooi Kee Beng, Johan Saravanamuttu and Lee Hock Guan (2008), March 8 Eclipsing May 13, Singapore: ISEAS.



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Rachagan, S. Sothi (1993) Law and the Electoral Process in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Reid Commission (1957) Report of the Federation of Malaya Constitutional Commission, Kuala Lumpur: Government Printer. Ross-Larson, Bruce (1976) The Politics of Federalism: Syed Kechik in East Malaysia, Singapore: Brue Ross-Larson. Sadiq, Kamal (2005) ‘When States Prefer Non-Citizens Over Citizens: Conflict Over Illegal Immigration into Malaysia’, International Studies Quarterly, 49(1): 101–22. Schedler, Andreas (2006) ‘The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism’, in Andreas Schedler (ed.), Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Smith, T.E. (1960) ‘The Malayan Elections of 1959’, Pacific Affairs, 33(1): 38–47. Star (2013) Star Special Full Results 13th General Election 2013, Tuesday 7 May. Stockwell, A.J. (1995) Malaya, Pt. III: The Alliance Route to Independence 1953–1957, British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B volume 3. London: HMSO. Sun (2013) GE13 Final Results, Tuesday 7 May. Tey Tsun Hang (2010) ‘Malaysia’s Electoral System: Government of the People?’, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 5(1): 147. Wong Chin Huat, James Chin and Norani Othman (2010) ‘Malaysia — towards a typology of an electoral one-party state’, Democratization, 17(5): 920–49.

Notes 1 2

3 4

5

6 7 8

9

This chapter will focus primarily on West Malaysia. For an excellent discussion of ‘electoral authoritarianism’ see Schedler (2006). Under the 1948 Federation Agreement only a small minority of Indians and Chinese were granted citizenship status. In part because the constituencies were divided according to the number of inhabitants, the result was rather uneven sizes of constituencies. This was because very few of the inhabitants were eligible voters, i.e. citizens, and poor registration of voters. The smallest seat was Terengganu Selatan with a population of 53,700 and the largest Georgetown with an estimated population of 137,000 (Merthyr Commission, 1954: 13). The Alliance won four seats unopposed. Except for one seat in Perak which was won by PAS. See Rachagan (1993: 54–7) for an analysis of the 1960 delineation. Dubious electoral delineations were only possible with the cooperation and collaboration of the Election Commission (EC). This body was constitutionally

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established in 1957 to administer the electoral system and its duties include the delimitation of constituencies every 10 years. Since independence, however, successive BN administrations have deployed a multi-pronged approach to remove the EC’s autonomy and authority. Election laws were amended and the EC has been packed with compliant officers (Tey, 2010). For example, it has been revealed that the EC chairman and deputy chairman in 2012 were former UMNO members. In early 2013 it was revealed that EC chairman Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof and his deputy Wan Ahmad Wan Omar ‘could have been’, or were still, UMNO members. The EC’s neutral charade was dramatically exposed when a former chairman, Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman, said that past re-delineation exercises had been designed to keep the Malays, meaning UMNO, in power. Finally, shortly after the 2013 elections the Najib administration rewarded the EC officials and workers with a RM200-million bonus. 10 For example, compare the actual number of seats apportioned to each Peninsular state and the number it should receive on the basis of its share of the total Peninsular electorate. Lim (2003: 39) argued that up to the 1994 redelineation exercise the difference between the actual seats apportioned and what they should receive had been kept ‘within bounds and prevented from becoming larger during the period in question’ – with the exception of Selangor which has become underrepresented with a deficit of four seats. Based on the 2003 redelineation, however, in 2013 Selangor’s underrepresentation had worsened to a deficit of eight seats while Pahang and Perak are overrepresented by a surplus of three seats each and Johor by two seats. In the 2013 election, West Malaysia’s underrepresentation had worsened to a deficit of 22 seats, while Sabah and Sarawak were overrepresented by nine and 13 seats respectively. 11 For an insightful analysis of the 2002 redelineation exercise see Brown (2005). 12 Although the Democratic Action Party (DAP) is supposed to be a non-ethnic party with social democratic ideals, circumstances forced the party over time to become dependent on the Chinese votes for support. Moreover, for a long time UMNO successfully stigmatised the party as an ‘anti-Malay Chinese chauvinistic’ party. In short, UMNO successfully managed to ‘racialise’ DAP. 13 Comprising UMNO, the Malay(si)an Chinese Association and Malay(si)an Indian Congress, the Alliance Party was formally registered as a political organisation on 30 October 1957. 14 This was also established by another PAS faction. 15 Other parties in BA were BERJASA, State Reform Party, Malaysian Democratic Party and Parti Angkatan Keadilan Insan Malaysia. 16 In 2004 the largest seats were nearly 20.5 times the size of the smallest seat due to the establishment of the new Federal Territory seat of Putrajaya. As the new



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federal administrative capital, Putrajaya is largely a municipality of Malay civil servants, a pillar of support for UMNO. Thus Malay voters made up 94 per cent of the total electorate of Putrajaya and UMNO easily won the seat in 2013. 17 In descending order of total voters: Kapar (144,159), Serdang (133,139), Subang (128,543), Hulu Langat (127,347), Gombak (123,290), Puchong (107,010), Kota Raja (105,909), Selayang (105,895), and Kelana Jaya (101,236). 18 Gelang Patah (106,726 voters), Pasir Gudang (101,041 voters) and Pulai (100,490 voters). 19 Seremban (102,305 voters). 20 A similar pattern of mal-apportionment of seats also exists in Sabah and Sarawak. For example, Muslim Bumiputera-dominant and -majority seats made up 45.6 per cent of the total seats in East Malaysia and non-Muslim-dominant and -majority seats made up 33.3 per cent. In contrast, Chinese-dominant and -majority seats made up 14 per cent of the total. In terms of electoral size, Muslim and non-Muslim Bumiputera-dominant and -majority seats with fewer than 30,000 voters made up 42.1 per cent of the total. 21 PR’s component parties are the People’s Justice Party (PKR), the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and the Democratic Action Party (DAP). Although PR has yet to receive official recognition from the Registrar of Societies, in the 2013 election the three parties more or less campaigned as a coalition. 22 For all three constituencies, the total votes won by the PKR state candidates exceeded those won by UMNO candidates, indicating split voting. The split vote seems to be along the line of voting for PAS candidates at the state level but voting for UMNO over PKR at the federal level. 23 Merdeka Centre claimed that BN won a huge percentage of the advance and postal votes that helped the coalition to win 30 Parliamentary seats including Setiawangsa and Titiwangsa (The Malaysian Insider, 12 August 2013). 24 Calculations based on BN winning 51 per cent of the votes in each of the 112 smallest Parliamentary seats which the coalition had won in 2013.

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Chapter 5

The Political Economy of FELDA Seats: UMNO’s Malay Rural Fortress in GE13 Khor Yu Leng

INTRODUCTION The past decade has seen remarkable shifts in Malaysian electoral politics. The dominance of UMNO 1 and BN is waning and voting behaviour has become increasingly harder to predict along ethnic lines. This is demonstrated by the results in the recent 13th general election (GE13) on 5 May 2013, in which for the first time since independence the opposition represented a viable government alternative and lost by a narrow margin. In this struggle for power, the rural vote has been instrumental as it has disproportionate electoral power due to the mal-apportionment in the Malaysian electoral system and is traditionally the UMNO Malay stronghold. However, a subgroup in particular stands out because of its specific historical and institutional structure and its sheer size – the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA). FELDA is the much-admired premier land development agency of Malaysia. It helped a generation of landless Malays become a ‘rural middleclass’, mostly with four hectares of oil palm (initially rubber) smallholding and some investment holdings. A highly successful state-controlled and largely state- and self-funded programme (with some early World Bank loans), FELDA settled nearly 120,000 families from 1959 to 1990, developing 470,998 hectares (ha) of settler smallholdings and 340,142 ha of commercial plantations. It moved poor settler families to the frontiers of

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Johor, Pahang and Negeri Sembilan (these three states represent 80 per cent of FELDA settler areas) to work in modern agro-industrial estates carved out of the jungle. The 340,142 ha of non-settled plantations were operated commercially as a key source of self-funding for FELDA settlements and business expansion. Thus, the FELDA Group grew into a large and prosperous agro-industrial conglomerate. Such is FELDA’s importance to the current political leadership that it is administered by a board, which came under the Prime Minister’s Department in 2004. Opposition parties also tried to influence the sizable voting group in the run-up to GE13. The UMNO information chief Ahmad Maslan revealed to the media that out of approximately two million people who are settlers or work in FELDA, 1.2 million are voters (New Straits Times, 2010). This is a large number, which proves that FELDA is a voting block worth fighting over; FELDA areas account for 9 per cent of Malaysia’s 13 million registered voters. Thus, the political clout of this key rural interest group, who are essentially oil palm smallholders in a well-run state-administered programme, is substantial. This power is further compounded by Malaysia’s malapportionment between small rural and large urban constituencies and gives a disproportionate number of Parliamentary seats to rural constituencies. This chapter is about the political economy of FELDA and its important place in the electoral politics of GE13.2 However, the hope of Pakatan Rakyat (PR), the opposition coalition, to make inroads in BN’s proverbial FELDA ‘fortress’ vote bank for UMNO was dashed. UMNO has remained strong in rural areas and even improved its position compared to GE12. Efforts to lure the FELDA youth vote seem to have been flummoxed with so-called money politics, including the offer of new homes and land for the underemployed rural youth in these areas (Anon., 2013e, 2013f). This chapter reviews the electoral outcomes in three FELDA areas in the GE13 and examines some key strategies and tactics used in the heated electoral contest.

ELECTIONS AND THE RURAL VOTE Malaysian political parties have been largely constructed on the basis of race and, to a lesser extent, class. UMNO, the leading party of the ruling BN coalition, draws its support from Malays, especially those in rural areas, while MCA and MIC, also members of BN, reflect the interests of Chinese and Indian voters respectively. On the opposition side, PAS is an



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Islamist party largely drawing Malay voters, DAP is Chinese-dominated and PKR is Malay-led but more multi-ethnic. In Malaysia’s plural society, the different ethnic groups are centred in different geographies, with nonMalay populations historically concentrated in towns and Malays being rooted in rural areas. However, in recent decades there has been significant and increasing rural to urban migration. At the same time, the majority of the rural poor and the urban working class are Malays; Chinese are mostly located in urban centres and dominate commerce, while Indians are distributed across classes. Many observers have noted the peculiarity of Malaysian electoral politics as even though there is a democratic system in place, power has been monopolised by one party since 1957 and elections are not always free and fair. This has given rise to various characterisations such as ‘pseudo-democracy’ by Case (2001), soft authoritarianism (Means, 1996) or electoral authoritarianism (Ufen, 2009; Case, 2009). Wong et al. (2010) observe that in this ‘electoral authoritarian regime’ the ruling party achieves dominance by controlling the citizenship, international and interstate boundaries (both important in the early post-independence years) and, more significantly for our debate, by using mal-apportionment and gerrymandering of constituencies and other irregularities. The first election after Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad stepped down took place in 2004. BN’s performance was good as it won 64 per cent of the popular vote. However, the election in 2008 showed a swing towards the opposition (Abdul Rashid, 2009). The ruling coalition had enjoyed a twothirds majority in Parliament since 1969 and the surprising GE12 results were heralded as a victory of democracy against a quasi-democratic BN rule, with more transparency and a larger role for civil society (Case, 2009). Since GE12 the opposition led by Anwar has been increasingly regarded as a true alternative government. This was cemented in the strengthening of the alliance parties who named themselves Pakatan Rakyat (PR) (People’s Alliance) (Abdul Rashid, 2009; Ufen, 2009). Given this momentum, GE13 was a hotly contested election. Chin (2013) notes the main BN and PR strategies during the election period. For BN, the campaign centred on Najib Razak and his 1Malaysia slogan, a deliberate effort to move away from race-based tactics and to win back some of the Indian and Chinese voters. A key strategy was the use of ‘cash hand-outs to key segments of society, especially the rural and urban lower

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class’ (ibid.: 2). The opposition’s message centred on the racial differences entrenched in UMNO rule as well as the corruption and deteriorating economic conditions. PR was able to demonstrate its leadership by pointing out its successes in the PR-governed states. Ultimately, the results of GE13 were disappointing for the opposition. In a heavily contested election haunted by questions about irregularities, the opposition won 89 seats compared to BN’s 133 seats out of a total 222 seats. The Parliamentary majority of BN (60 per cent) declined further from the previous low of 60 per cent in GE12 but, most importantly, it lost the popular vote with 47.8 per cent against 50.9 per cent for the opposition, raising questions about the legitimacy of BN rule (Arakaki, 2013). UMNO has traditionally represented Malay interests across the board, but the rural Malays are its ‘bastion of support’ (Gomez, 2007: 5). Capturing the rural vote has been a strategic issue for UMNO since independence; UMNO agreed on liberalisation of citizenship for non-Malays in exchange for heavier weighting of Malay-majority rural areas (Lim, 2002; Wong et al., 2010). With this type of mal-apportionment, UMNO in effect gives more electoral power to its traditional power base and has an advantage over the opposition, whose support is predominantly in urban centres. UMNO has tried over the years to cement this support by targeting rural development policies to Malays in the context of affirmative action (Gomez, 2007). However, as a counterweight to the economic opportunities that this segment enjoyed due to targeted policies, the shifting economic situation in the Malaysian rural sector has left deep structural problems and has dampened the employment and income outlook. Given the importance of the rural voting bloc, the opposition has also tried to make inroads into rural Malay areas. PAS, in particular, also has a broad support base in rural areas and is considered as the only opposition party that can undermine UMNO in these constituencies. Indeed, since the 1999 election the rural vote has become less predictable, with voters alternating between UMNO and PAS in Malay-majority rural constituencies, probably due to the increasing dissatisfaction of rural voters with corruption and inequality (Gomez, 2007). However, in GE13, PAS was not able ‘to win over a significant number of rural voters to overcome UMNO’s formidable rural machinery’ (Chin, 2013: 9). PR as a whole won 28 per cent of the rural and semi-urban zones (Politweet, 2013); for every seat won by PR, BN won



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2.5 seats outside of the urban zone. This could have been due to the lack of access to alternative sources of media by rural voters who were heavily targeted by BN campaigning, including the distribution of cash hand-outs mentioned above. BN used the mainstream media to boost its image as a protector of Malay interests, something that PAS cannot provide given its alliance with DAP (Chin, 2013). This discussion shows that the rural vote is an important element in Malaysian electoral politics in general and GE13 in particular. However, we feel that a particular subgroup of this vote – FELDA – deserves a much closer look. This group deserves special mention because of the specific historical and institutional ties that bring these voters together and the way different sides have tried to capture it using various strategies. Furthermore, its sheer size shows that as a distinct voting group it is of increasing importance, not only in relation to other rural voters but also to the Malaysian electorate as a whole. FELDA sites span 54 rural and semi-urban Parliamentary seats, and have been estimated to encompass 1.2 million voters according to UMNO information chief Ahmad Maslan (New Straits Times, 2010). This is a staggering number, which proves that FELDA is a voting block worth fighting over. FELDA areas can account for 9 per cent of Malaysia’s 13 million registered voters. Recognising the importance of the rural vote and within that of FELDA in particular, this study aims to shed light on the political economy of FELDA within the context of GE13. The next section will provide a brief background of the organisation

FELDA AS A VOTING GROUP IN GE13 Between 1957 and the 1980s Malaysia’s rural sector underwent a long period of state-initiated land development programmes. They were implemented: (i) to help satisfy ‘land hunger’ or pent-up demand which had been caused by the disruption of normal land extension since the 1930s; and (ii) for the purposes of poverty eradication and social restructuring of Malaysia’s plural or multi-racial society. During this period social mobility was given a tremendous boost, especially among the Malays. State policy for rural land development and the ‘economic miracle’ of rapid growth and a shift to the urban-manufacturing sector worked hand-in-hand, transforming and uplifting key sections of the rural Malay community (Ibrahim, 2010, 2012; Fatimah and Mad Nasir, 1997). FELDA was formed by an Act of Parliament

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and launched by future Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1956. It has been a key agent of change, aiming to create progressive rural communities and modernising rural economies. The agency settled poor and landless Malays in new land developments from 1957 to 1990, giving them access to the productive factors – training them in modern agricultural methods of industrial crop production and offering them credit to buy their land and for inputs, and even to develop small businesses. The FELDA settlers have benefited greatly from this key land development programme of UMNO. A vote for UMNO, which delivered socio-economic development and mobility, therefore would seem obvious to many. In total, FELDA relocated 120,000 families from 1959 to 1990, developing 470,998 hectares of settler smallholdings and 340,142 hectares of commercial plantations. The core period for settlement was 1957 to the late 1970s in Peninsular Malaysia and thereafter East Malaysia (mostly commercial plantations without settlers). An overview of the key periods of FELDA’s evolution and their characteristics can be seen in Table 5.1. FELDA experimented with different forms of ownership, from individual to block proprietorship, eventually diversifying its interests and investing in upstream and downstream operations while also managing its own non-settled commercial plantations. Through their cooperative, FELDA settlers and staff became the controlling shareholders of the conglomerate, with 51 per cent ownership; but ownership of the commercial plantations was held by FELDA. The commercial operations have been a great success; FELDA owns one of Southeast Asia’s largest commercial plantations, and a multitude of business interests, e.g., in crop processing and transportation. However, its settlement schemes have been more disappointing. Instead of realising the vision of modern Malay family-run farms that FELDA was designed for, yields have been lagging, and labour shortages are crippling profitability. It is notable that sharecropping has re-emerged, relying overwhelmingly on Indonesian migrants, resulting in lower incomes for FELDA smallholder owners (Anon., 2013d). In the replanting process run by FELDA, all replanting work and subsequent farm work are done by contract or hired labour (80–90 per cent of whom are Indonesian migrant workers). For quite some time the ageing settlers and their descendants have not found agricultural fieldwork an attractive prospect (Anon., 2013d).



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Table 5.1: Key Periods of FELDA’s Growth 1. Financial Assistance (1957–1960)

FELDA distributed funding to existing land development schemes administered by other state agencies.

2. Management (1960–1967)

FELDA started managing its own schemes. Land was developed by contractors; each settler household was allocated a 4-ha lot and received the land title after full loan repayment to FELDA.

3. Package Deal (1967–1990)

More novel and cooperative Block System (1970) and Shares System (1985) were attempted but reverted to the more popular individual land ownership in 1988. FELDA diversified its upstream and downstream activities. Settlers were given more social services in a ‘package deal’.

4. Agribusiness (1991–2012)

With increasing labour shortages, FELDA took its last settlers in 1990. Non-settled lands that had been developed were instead managed by FELDA on a commercial basis. FELDA therefore changed from an agency with social objectives to a profit-making palm oil conglomerate.

5. FELDA Global Ventures (2012 onward)

FELDA’s listed arm is expected to use its key cashgenerating asset, its commercial plantations, as its key funder for overseas investments in palm oil estates and downstream businesses.

Source: Adapted from Bahrin and Lee (1988, 2006).

FELDA Voting Behaviour Even though rural voting behaviour has been discussed in the literature as shown in the previous sections, the situation regarding FELDA has not been studied before. Without a doubt the party with the largest influence over FELDA is UMNO. The relationship between FELDA and UMNO has been close since the inception of the agency, which was a programme launched by a widely respected UMNO leader and designed to favour the Malay rural population in the context of affirmative action (Gomez, 2007). Political considerations were present as much at the micro level as at the top. For example, to become a FELDA settler one had to get the recommendation of local UMNO representatives; settlers had come from other parts of the country ‘on the UMNO ticket’ but many, especially those originating from

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Kelantan, had become PAS members. There was also a period (1973–77) when PAS was part of the UMNO-led BN coalition, and this is thought to have had an influence on FELDA during that period. It would be useful if other studies examine this period of FELDA’s development and its impact on political-economic issues (Anon., 2013k). Aside from external political influences, FELDA has also been rocked by intra-UMNO political tussles. The shared group-farming system was abandoned in the 1980s as competition within UMNO, via the MahathirRazaleigh tussle (1987–88), resulted in the government giving FELDA settlers their longed-for individual land titles instead of shares. The political capital of the settlements has also been demonstrated by the fact that, in the past, state governments had wanted to take the FELDA schemes back from FELDA but lacked the funds to do so, so they remained with FELDA (Anon., 2002e). However, the voting preferences of FELDA settlers have become increasingly complicated to predict as second-generation settlers come of age and socio-economic situations shift. For example, PAS supporters among FELDA settlers tend to detach themselves from FELDA once they receive their land title, preferring to manage their own land, even though their returns may be lower. As a whole, FELDA settlers have also realised they are an important political grouping and they might have the capacity to outgrow their political ‘sponsors’, as evidenced during and soon after the Mahathir–Anwar fallout (1998–99) (Anon., 2002e). In the 1999 general election Malay voting against UMNO was at a height, with an estimate by Kamarudin Jaffar of 70 per cent of Malays voting against UMNO (cited in Roslan, 2001). Then, the political rhetoric of ethnicity failed to activate the Malay vote for UMNO, and some point to the failure to address intra-Malay distribution issues, despite the many agencies and bodies3 tasked to advance Bumiputera economic outcomes (Roslan 2001). During the run-up to GE13, key PAS personnel and the UMNO information chief Datuk Ahmad Maslan estimated (without disclosing their estimation methods) the FELDA voter support for UMNO at 70–90 per cent, while UMNO hypothesised that most PAS supporters emerged when PAS was a member of BN (New Straits Times, 2010). The activity and strength of UMNO-linked NGOs in the social sphere among FELDA areas have been cited as a reason for PAS’s inability to increase its voter base (New Straits Times, 2010):



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If PAS has Anak to help champion its cause, UMNO has several nongovernmental organisations, such as Gabungan Wawasan Generasi FELDA (GWGF) and Majlis Belia FELDA Malaysia (MBFM), on its side. MBFM has been very active in all 54 parliamentary constituencies covering FELDA settlements since the last general election. It boasts of about 100,000 members and organises mostly social and sports programmes.

With this in mind we go on to examine the UMNO-BN and PR strategies to capture FELDA voters.

BN Strategy: The Listing of FELDA Global Apart from strategies aimed at capturing rural voters as a whole, for instance with cash hand-outs and heavy media presence (Chin, 2013), it can be argued that BN used the FELDA Global IPO4 in June 2012 as a FELDAspecific campaign strategy. Its large mature oil palm area makes it the third largest plantation company globally and the largest in Malaysia. PM Najib announced the proposed public listing, promising benefits to settlers in early 2012, more than a year before GE13 took place, and so snap polls had long been anticipated. For the opposition, especially PAS, a key strategy was to halt the IPO altogether. The IPO shows the importance the ruling coalition attaches to FELDA and the level of contestation. First, despite promises of benefits for settlers, some FELDA settler groups were wary. High Court injunctions were filed by members of Koperasi Permodalan FELDA Malaysia (KPF) (FELDA Investment Cooperative) to stop its extraordinary general meeting on the matter. The campaign seeking to prevent the public listing of FELDA Global gathered some momentum with the formation of the Save FELDA Movement (GSF), a coalition of more than ten NGOs. Most of these efforts were led by a PAS-led NGO named ANAK (Persatuan Anak-Anak FELDA) (National Association of FELDA Settlers Children). However, they did not achieve real traction, probably for lack of details on the listing and lack of sufficient publicity and debate. Early in May 2012 the Prime Minister announced the details of the windfall pay-out to the FELDA settlers. The RM15,000 pay-out was well received and this seems to have flummoxed most of the naysayers, although the political opposition argued for a fairer pay-out of RM50,000 (Wong, 2012). However, how far this message reached the FELDA voters needs to be ascertained. It is thought that it did not reach very far (Anon., 2013m).

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The magnitude of the payments in relation to a typical settler family income is evident. FELDA has more than 113,000 settler households. Settlers, their children and dependants probably now number over a million, or 1 in 15 of the Malay population. This large group has formed the backbone of Malaysia’s rural community. With high commodity prices, a settler may have had net earnings of over RM2,500 per month in mid-2012 when the CPO price was around RM3,000 per tonne (under sharecropping, but double or more if family-run); so the windfall offered represented six months of this level of income (Khor, 2012a). The FELDA Global listing missed its original April 2012 target date. This could have been caused by a level of contestation that may have surprised its promoters. A significant part of this effort was led by Mazlan Aliman, who heads the PAS-linked ANAK NGO.5 He is the son of a FELDA settler from Bukit Ramon in Johor. Amongst his key efforts were the following: a) he publicised information that most of FELDA staff were against the public listing (based on a leaked document of a survey by consultants); b) while acknowledging former Prime Minister Tun Razak Hussein as the nation’s father of development, he pointed out that some view his son Najib as a destroyer of the FELDA programme which his father had built; and c) he challenged the eligibility of Negeri Sembilan Menteri Besar and leading UMNO politician, Isa Samad, to hold the dual position as FELDA chairperson and head of the KPF, the FELDA Investment Cooperative (Malaysiakini, 2012). Isa Samad was removed six months after the IPO from his position as head of the KPF following a High Court decision. The KPF was a key hurdle in FELDA Global’s IPO. Back in 1992, KPF became the 51 per cent owner of the FELDA Group (ex-commercial plantations). This unusual move likely flummoxed most earlier thoughts of privatisation, as it implied that FELDA settlers and employees (members of the KPF) would be asked to vote on this. Thus, FELDA remained intact for 55 years until a more determined political leadership apparently helped steer the KPF and designed a suitable ‘limited restructuring’ for the public float of a large chunk of its assets in the FELDA Global IPO of 28 June 2012 (Khor, 2012a). At the time of its debut, global markets and palm oil prices had gone a bit wobbly in a two-year slide from peak prices, and FELDA Global’s promoters were probably disappointed that the so-called target price range upper band could not be reached. Despite the weakened market



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conditions, early share trading in FELDA Global was still strong; 736 million shares (equivalent to 34 per cent of IPO shares issued) were traded at a value of RM3.9 billion and we estimate that RM616 million in profits could have been pocketed by IPO shareholders. FELDA Global’s cloudy outlook remains. Heavy selling pressure has been quite well absorbed by market buyers; large key buyers include Malaysian state-controlled pension funds. Its shares have drifted down towards the IPO price after a quick ramp up to RM5.50 from the listing price of RM4.45–4.55/share (IPO on 28 June 2012) (Khor, 2012b).6 The short-term gains to the FELDA settlers look substantive (probably more than anything offered to any large interest group as a pre-electoral sweetener). However, data have not been disclosed on whether some of the large annual financial supports directly or indirectly received from FELDA entities that were listed will continue. An analysis of whether the short-term pay-offs exceed any long-term reduction in support is not possible. Thus, on a longer time horizon, the FELDA settlers could either be net gainers or net losers from the FELDA Global IPO (Khor, 2012a). Furthermore, political opponents of the ruling coalition have said that the FELDA settlers have a moral right to the lands, which will be leased by FELDA Global for 99 years. However, this seems a relatively weak argument given many Malaysians’ apparent low preference for farming work. These lands were alienated to FELDA for the purpose of its resettlement programme but they were not allocated to settlers on the usual basis of 4 hectares per family. Instead, the extra land was retained by FELDA and operated as commercial plantations, with proceeds effectively used to support settlement and other activities, as well as develop downstream and related businesses. Thus, FELDA settlers, their children and others who might be in want of agricultural land have lost their last hope for access to FELDA’s land bank via this listing. Assuming 4 hectares per settler, the plantation land leased to FELDA Global could instead accommodate some 80,000 new Malaysian settler families if FELDA were to resume its original mission. This argument might not have had political traction as many FELDA voters might not have understood the so-called economic opportunity cost and, furthermore, many might not envisage relocating to or within East Malaysia to work as oil palm smallholders.

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Opposition Strategy: Settlers versus FELDA Issues An opposition strategy regarding FELDA was that of stirring discontent between settlers and FELDA over alleged unfair (under)payments for their produce. A key figure in this was lawyer-cum-Parliamentarian R. Sivarasa of PKR who served as lead counsel in some of the cases. Various settler lawsuits were filed against FELDA on its alleged cheating in grading their fruit, over: a) a too-low oil extraction rate (OER) accorded the settlers and b) disqualified fruit bunches which were neither paid for nor returned to the settlers. The most recent lawsuit claims of losses per settler amount to RM30,912 (due to an overly low OER)7 plus RM1,344 (for disqualified bunches) = RM32,256 in just one year. One of the settler lawsuits claimed this for 17 years, thus coming to nearly RM550,000 per settler. This lawsuit strategy predated and seemed to be running independently of political tussles over the FELDA Global IPO. Even so, it is interesting to compare the financial implications of the two. By the author’s calculations, the RM32,256 claim for just one year is equivalent to 2.15 times the windfall payment of RM15,000 to settlers from the FELDA Global listing.8 As the two political messages were run by different opposition politicians who did not seem to work together, it seems unlikely that the above comparative computation was made or communicated to FELDA settlers. A complete list of settler lawsuits against FELDA is not readily available. There have been at least 23 lawsuits filed. Eighteen cases against FELDA have been officially reported by the Prime Minister’s Department; up to February 2011, they are as follows: 12 have been decided by the courts, with the only loss for FELDA being the technical loss in the FELDA Kemahan 3 cases in Kelantan where FELDA’s counsel failed to show up; six cases, with total claims of RM90 million, were pending (MySinchew, 2011). Since early 2011 at least five large new cases have been filed, including several by Sivarasa of PKR. The claims in the following eight cases are in excess of RM1.2 billion: 1. Four settlements in Pahang: FELDA Mempaga 1, Mempaga 2, Mempaga 3 and Bukit Damar 2. Eight FELDA settlements in Pekan, Pahang: FELDA Chini and FELDA Chini Timur 3. In Jengka, Pahang 4. Bera, Pahang



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5. Another in Jengka, Pahang 6. Rancangan Serting and Gugusan Raja Alias in Negeri Sembilan 7. FELDA Maokil in Labis, Johor 8. FELDA Kemahang 3, Kelantan (a landmark case) Five of these eight ‘settler versus FELDA’ lawsuits are in Pahang where, as mentioned previously, settlements suffer from relative lack of social cohesion. Settlers in eight FELDA settlements located in the Prime Minister’s constituency of Pekan in Pahang have also taken a suit against FELDA. The case involves 770 FELDA settlers from eight Rancangan FELDA Chini and Chini Timur, Pekan, filing a suit against FELDA and FELDA Palm Industries Sdn Bhd on 26 April 2012 for RM422 million of losses over 17 years. This brings FELDA settler dissatisfaction to Najib’s doorstep. Other opposition strategies targeted FELDA voters who were employed by PAS, centred on increasing their popularity among FELDA voters and especially the second generation. To further their aim, PAS set up ANAK in 2009 to raise PAS’s support base in FELDA schemes. Their campaign highlighted issues of alleged mismanagement of FELDA and the FELDA listing, arguing that the settlers did not get enough of a pay-out and it increased their income insecurity. Finally, they focused on placing candidates who were experienced in FELDA issues in areas with a high concentration of FELDA schemes (Star, 2013b). Overall, BN’s strategy on FELDA was centred on the windfall bonus from the FELDA Global IPO. It was contested by the opposition, especially PAS, although the latter was unable to stop the process. Furthermore, PAS tried to stir discontent among FELDA settlers while also making some positive steps toward enhancing its influence on second-generation voters. It is unclear to what extent the majority of settlers were swayed by the prospect of a quick pay-out versus the uncertainty of their future financial support and the potential loss of land for future settlements. Given the overall lack of publicity on the issue, as well as lack of access to alternative media outlets in rural areas and the banning of PAS-led ANAK campaigning in FELDA areas outside of the very short GE13 campaign period, it is likely that the reach of the opposition message was not as strong as it would have liked.

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The Results of GE13: FELDA a Key UMNO Vote Bank Even though further research is needed to determine what impact the strategies above had on FELDA voters, the results of GE13 confirm that FELDA is still an UMNO stronghold. The importance of FELDA voters for UMNO can be estimated by political zoning analysis. Politweet (2013) combines a study of Google Maps, voter base ethnicity and the Election Commission’s Parliamentary constituency boundaries. 9 It summarises Malaysia’s Parliamentary seats and voter base by three key zones used by the Election Commission: 125 rural (5,756,489 voters), 54 semi-urban (3,952,432 voters) and 43 urban (3,559,081 voters) for a total of 222 seats (13,268,002 voters). The FELDA land schemes cover approximately 54 Parliamentary constituencies that are predominantly rural and semi-urban. Three important insights that can be derived give an approximation of FELDA’s importance. First, 179 (81 per cent) of 222 Parliamentary seats may be zoned as rural and semi-urban; thus, FELDA schemes are present in 54 (30 per cent) of 179 such seats. Second, PR won 38 (43 per cent) of its 89 seats in urban areas and BN won a low 5 (4 per cent) of its 133 seats in urban areas. While PR is supported in the ratio 43:57 by highly urban versus other geographies, BN has become reliant in the extreme (96 per cent) on rural and semi-urban voters, having lost in most highly urban areas in GE13. Third, the rural and semi-urban 179 seats were won as follows: 51 (28 per cent) by PR and 128 (72 per cent) by BN; thus, outside the urban zone, for every seat won by PR, BN won 2.5 seats. It becomes evident that rural and semi-urban voters are BN’s core supporters and since 30 per cent of such geographical areas are inhabited by FELDA settlers, it can be concluded that FELDA has gained in importance as UMNO’s key vote bank.10 Given FELDA’s support for BN, there is speculation that BN could carve out more winnable seats in FELDA areas in the next electoral boundary re-delineation proposal, which could add another 20 Parliamentary seats to the existing 54 seats from FELDA. Such a move could increase the existing disproportionality problem, and could give more power to voters in the FELDA areas relative to those in the larger urban constituencies (Harakahdaily, 2013).



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PR CONTESTS FELDA SEATS: THREE CASE STUDIES The opposition was disappointed with the results that came in from the FELDA areas as it showed a swing to UMNO-BN and little evidence of a FELDA youth vote swing to the opposition (‘we just about lost in every saluran (age cohort grouping)’) (Anon., 2013e, 2013f), despite various strategies used. Prior to GE13, the opposition coalition held four of the so-called FELDA Parliamentary seats, with PAS incumbents in Pendang, Padang Terap and Baling in Kedah, while PKR held Tanah Merah, Kelantan (Star, 2013b). However, all these Parliamentary seats swung to UMNOBN and were lost. We examine below three state seat voting results from GE13, one each from Negeri Sembilan, Pahang and Johor, which featured significant effort from the opposition. All three seats were FELDA areas, with two of them dominant FELDA settlement areas (Palong and Jengka) and the third in Johor selected as a PAS FELDA activist was a candidate there. These three seats were identified as having ‘significant effort’ from the opposition coalition with active opposition campaigning, as confirmed by top rural-focused politicians in interviews (Anon., 2013e, 2013f ). Furthermore, there is an added spatial dimension as each seat is located in a different part of Peninsular Malaysia (northern, central and southern). This analysis focuses on state voting results 11 as these areas are smaller and better contain the FELDA settlement areas, in contrast with Parliamentary seats which typically straddle two or three state seats. Nonstructured interviews were conducted with opposition candidates and detailed analysis was focused on the state voting results for aforementioned reasons. Broadly, the general level of BN support in the Peninsula is higher in the south, especially in Johor (86 per cent votes for BN) and lower in the north-east, including Pahang (67 per cent votes for BN for a 19 per cent-age point difference) (Table 5.2). This is probably due to basic socio-economic differences that generated disparate outcomes on the replanting issue, a key economic decision, which resulted in a significant contrast between FELDA settler economic behaviour in Johor and Pahang (Anon., 2002d, 2002e).

PKR Challenged at Palong (Figure 5.1) FELDA experts among opposition politicians (Anon., 2013e, 2013f) report poor results for PKR in the state seat of Palong, Negeri Sembilan, attributing it in part to a combination of weak logistics, lack of funds, and lack of

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Table 5.2: Percentage of Barisan Nasional Votes in 258 FELDA Voting Districts in the GE13 Parliamentary Election, by Age Cohort and by State State Sabah Johor Perlis N. Sembilan Perak Melaka Kedah Selangor Terengganu Pahang Kelantan

21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 > 60 90% 90% 93% 97% 87% 84% 85% 91% 74% 77% n.a. 85% 74% 74% 77% 82% 71% 72% 76% 78% 74% 70% 77% 81% 71% 69% 73% 80% 68% 72% 71% 76% 66% 61% 64% 73% 63% 64% 69% 70% 59% 60% 60% 62%

Total n.a. 89% 86% 81% 79% 79% 80% 80% 73% 70% 71%

92% 86% 78% 77% 75% 74% 74% 73% 67% 67% 61%

n.a. - not available as there were no voting results for this cohort

Source: Author’s presentation of data provided by Merdeka Centre (2013). Note: GE13 Parliamentary voting results for Barisan Nasional in 258 voting districts with name ‘FELDA’ plus other known FELDA areas. It is not a comprehensive listing of FELDA voting areas, but includes a large part of FELDA geographic voting areas. The voting behaviour of those FELDA voters who have migrated would not be captured. Overall, the data should be carefully interpreted, but they represent a fair but incomplete preliminary indicator of the voting tendency for Barisan Nasional by age cohort and by state.

counting agents in the contest for this 100 per cent FELDA area. The total number of votes in GE13 was 16,044. According to FELDA’s records (Bahrin and Lee, 2006), the total number of settlers in Palong 01–10, Palong 12 and 14 was 5,493 (the numbering of FELDA ‘Palong’ settlements does not correspond fully with the Election Commission area names, so this is merely indicative). In the 2008 general election, BN won with a majority of 4,217 or 44 per cent (votes counted 9,667) and in GE13 BN did even better, winning with a majority of 8,456 or 62 per cent (votes counted 13,724; +42 per cent from 2008). BN garnered 71–87 per cent of Palong votes by saluran / voting age cohort stream. By broad age categories, there was a very slight tendency for more elderly voters (voting in saluran 1, while younger voters vote in saluran 3 and 4) to vote for BN. As such, the opposition coalition’s hoped for youth vote was almost imperceptible in the Palong state vote results. The



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Figure 5.1: Percentage of Barisan Nasional Votes Ranked by Saluran / Voting Stream Age Seniority for All Voting Areas in N06 Palong, Negeri Sembilan in GE13 Parliamentary Election

Source: Election Commission of Malaysia (2013) Note: Saluran (voting stream) number is indicated at the bottom of the x-axis, as well as with each voting area name, e.g. at the far right, ‘Palong 3–4’ refers to voting area named ‘Palong 3’ and saluran 4.

peaks and troughs above and below the dotted trend line indicate the voting districts where BN did particularly well (Palong 7) or below average (Palong 4). A more detailed study might try to explain the outperformance and underperformance areas, whether they are due to voter socio-demographics, local issues, campaign tactics or other reasons. As for the Parliamentary seat voting results, BN votes dipped by about 1 per cent-age point from 80.3 per cent to 79.3 per cent from 2008 to 2013.

A Tight Fight at Jengka (Figure 5.2) Jengka, Pahang was fought by PAS candidate Tuan Ibrahim, the leader of PAS Pahang. An extremely popular politician, he lost the Jengka state seat (a 100 per cent FELDA area) by a narrow margin in 2008, when BN won with 596 votes or a 4 per cent margin. This time, BN won with an increased majority of 1,303 or 7 per cent of the total 19,603 votes counted (an increase of 37 per cent from the previous election). There was a 1.3 per cent swing toward BN.12 The PAS on-the-ground election machinery

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Figure 5.2: Percentage of Barisan Nasional Votes Ranked by Saluran / Voting Stream Age Seniority for All Voting Areas in N29 Jengka, Pahang in GE13 Parliamentary Election

Source: Election Commission of Malaysia (2013) Note: Saluran (voting stream) number is indicated at the bottom of the x-axis, as well as with each voting area name, e.g. at the far left, ‘FELDA Jengka 11 – 1’ refers to voting area named ‘FELDA Jengka 11’ and saluran 1.

was very well organised here, so alleged cheating at the counting level would have been minimised (Anon., 2013f). BN garnered 35–70 per cent of Jengka votes by saluran / voting stream. By broad age categories there is an obvious tendency for more elderly voters (voting in saluran 1, while younger voters vote in higher numbered saluran, e.g. saluran 3 and 4) to vote for BN. Jengka is apparently fertile ground for opposition votes because it has a corpus of PAS-supported settlers, less homogeneous communities and fewer alternative income opportunities (Anon., 2002d, 2002e). In the Parliamentary seat voting results, BN votes decreased by 0.2 per cent to 54.8 per cent in 2013.

PAS Activist in the Johor Stronghold (Figures 5.3 and 5.4) Mazlan Aliman, PAS’s high-profile personality, aimed to represent the younger FELDA generation lost in Bukit Permai, Johor, a state seat which includes three FELDA areas, town voters and some Chinese areas. Despite winning, BN faced a massive 12.9 per cent-age point swing towards the PAS



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Figure 5.3: Percentage of Barisan Nasional Votes Ranked by Saluran / Voting Stream Age Seniority for All Voting Areas in N50 Bukit Permai, Johor in GE13 Parliamentary Election

Source: Election Commission of Malaysia (2013) Note: FELDA areas are marked with double asterisk**. Saluran (voting stream) number is indicated at the bottom of the x-axis, as well as with each voting area name, e.g. at the far left, ‘Bukit Permai 1 – 1**’ refers to voting area named “Bukit Permai” and saluran 1, a FELDA area.

Figure 5.4: Percentage of Barisan Nasional votes ranked by saluran / voting stream age seniority for all voting areas in N50 Bukit Permai, Johor (key FELDA areas) at GE13 parliamentary election

Source: Election Commission of Malaysia (2013) Note: FELDA areas are marked with double asterisk**. Saluran (voting stream) number is indicated at the bottom of the x-axis, as well as with each voting area name e.g. at the far left, ‘Bukit Permai 1 – 1**’ refers to voting area named ‘Bukit Permai’ and saluran 1, a FELDA area.

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candidate (Butler swing measures in excess of 10 per cent are considered unusual). BN’s majority was 3,369 or 18 per cent (votes counted 19,103; +65 per cent from 2008). In 2008 BN had a bigger majority of 5,192 or 28 per cent (votes counted 11,578). In the Kulai Parliamentary seat (Bukit Permai is one of three state seats in this seat) voting results, BN votes fell from about 61.2 per cent in 2008 to 40.7 per cent in 2013, dropping by 20.5 per cent in this ethnic Chinese majority area. Johor urban and ethnic Chinese voters swung toward the opposition, but FELDA votes for BN remained high. Compared to the state voting results in the FELDA areas of Jengka and Palong, these Johor FELDA areas were even more strongly supportive of BN, with results ranging from 80 to 90 per cent pro-BN. Here, it was obviously still difficult for a high-profile opposition candidate, Mazlan Aliman, fighting for FELDA and FELDAyouth rights, to substantially shift these Johor FELDA voters.

The Women’s Vote and Fear of DAP Chinese Rule Mazlan Aliman and PAS members in the FELDA settlements blamed their failure in GE13 on BN’s racial and financial campaign that cost them the key women’s vote. They report that UMNO-BN used a racial and financial benefits campaign, while PAS party workers’ access to voters was constrained. ‘We could not get past the kitchen door …. FELDA womenfolk stayed at home and were not exposed to PAS political programmes but instead, were influenced by the BN-controlled media and FELDA-sponsored events.’ Mazlan Aliman said that ‘in FELDA, everything is under control. Every area has a village head. Every 20 houses has a chief, assistant chief and committee members. At the higher levels, there is a FELDA manager, assistant and officers who control every settlers and their families’ movement’ (Malaysian Insider, 2013). UMNO-BN are reported to have played up ethnic issues (Anon., 2013l). ANAK members reported Puteri UMNO and Wanita UMNO (the women’s wings) going to the settlers’ homes to give out rice with a special message: ‘this is rice, keep the rice properly, when the Chinese rules Malaysia, we would have rice shortage’. This message was reinforced via pamphlets, CDs and briefings. Mazlan Aliman noted that access was made easier by the ruling government’s links within FELDA. Settlers believed that the Chinese- dominant DAP would rule Malaysia if PR won the elections. The settlers were not aware that DAP



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only contested in 45 out of the 222 Parliamentary seats in GE13. Thus, critics said it appeared that the Islamist party did not push enough to explain PR’s alliance and DAP’s fraction of the seat distribution. An exception was perhaps Temerloh – which PAS won – where the message might have been more strongly and effectively put (Malaysian Insider, 2013).

Money Politics and Logistics ‘FELDA settlers are not so educated and so they are easily influenced by such campaigns. What more, with the money paid to FELDA of about RM15,000 each family,’ Mazlan Aliman said (ibid). Other opposition politicians spoke about other problems in the contest over FELDA voters (Anon., 2013d, 2013e, 2013f). These included: 1. The RM15,000 pay-out from FELDA Global – this was a big decider (a problem also highlighted by Mazlan Aliman (Malaysian Insider, 2013). Although some in the opposition argued for a higher pay-out of RM50,000, this was likely not heard. Furthermore, the complexity of issues relating to the FELDA Global listing were ill-understood even among opposition politicians (most lack a strong background in corporate and/or financial work), much less among the rural voters. This also meant that the various opposition politicians who tackled FELDA issues were not able to coordinate to convey a strong message to FELDA voters (Anon., 2013d). 2. In the last week of campaigning, BN is alleged to have given out cash and hampers to every FELDA household. This was done in several rounds by young politicians, women politicians and by the candidate. The first effort was greeted rather coldly, but greater warmth could be observed after each round of visits. 3. The opposition also failed to get a large FELDA youth vote as BN is reported to have made other additional gifts to this group during the campaign period. Most interestingly, it was reported that the youth were promised houses and land for resettlement, and younger voters were issued with land application forms. Mazlan Aliman confirms that BN influenced second-generation settlers by using ANAK’s approach of asking for a house within the settlements. ‘BN came and made show houses for the second generation settlers. If they wanted the house, they

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must ensure BN wins ….’ This was targeted at the newly-weds and those between the ages of 30 to 50 (Malaysian Insider, 2013). 4. In addition, other than in Jengka, the opposition was weak in logistics, funding, and short on counting agents (Anon., 2013f).

CONCLUSION Although it is unclear to what extent the BN and PR strategies impacted the FELDA vote – probably the most sizeable distinct rural voting group in GE13 – the evidence suggests that fears of Chinese DAP domination were played up, and that the FELDA Global listing was a strategic boon to UMNO-BN. Voters in the FELDA areas apparently received the FELDA Global listing windfall payment as the ‘glass is half-full’, despite any family frictions it seemed to have generated and however short-lived the cash was for many recipients (Anon., 2013d). In interviews with ethnic Malay voters (Anon., 2013g, 2013i) there is often mention about the ‘sense of gratitude’ that is said to be ingrained in the Malay psyche. UMNO-BN reportedly also used other efforts besides money politics; critically, to keep hold of the youth vote, forms to apply for new land for houses (Malaysian Insider, 2013; Anon., 2013e, 2013f). FELDA voters solidly returned BN candidates in the polls. The ‘glass is half-empty’ arguments of the opposition included: a) efforts to block the listing of FELDA Global with contestation over the partial corporate restructuring and the key FELDA cooperative and b) arguments over an insufficient windfall payment for FELDA settlers from the listing exercise. These did not seem to gain popular attention or traction. The direct action of the ‘fruit grading cheating’ lawsuits strategy does not seem to have panned out either, despite its theoretical monetary pull (although the amounts sought appear inflated). Anecdotally, some Malay urban voters report that their rural kin did not heed what they heard in opposition ceramah in their voting decisions. ‘What do scandals and corruption mean to rural folk?’ and ‘the opposition had nothing much to say about their livelihoods’ are typical comments (Anon., 2013g, 2013i). In contrast, they report that UMNO-BN focused on the protection of Islam and Malay rights and promised rural development strategies and programmes which they thought were more effective rural vote getters. All these points suggest the need for more focus groups and surveys among rural voters to include regional comparative studies.



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The author hopes that these initial findings and case studies will inform subsequent detailed studies of strategy and tactics in Malaysia rural electoral contestation as well as efforts to better understand the socioeconomic situation of rural voters and their needs and aspirations. This may be apropos, in light of concerns about commodity prices, second and third generation issues, rural youth underemployment and racial fears. A renewed impetus for wider Malaysia rural studies will likely be sparked off by the outlook for a stronger contest for rural voters in the next general election. The Malay rural vote hopes for the PR opposition coalition will require a significant and serious challenge to UMNO-BN’s decades-long economic policy lead and administration over the country’s key rural land agencies, and its electoral strategy and tactics to address its beneficiaries. The opposition will need to better coordinate and drive an effective message to FELDA and other rural voters. In particular, they will need to address rural voter fears about DAP Chinese power, which the PR politicians were in large part unable to allay in GE13. Efforts to lure the FELDA youth vote are widely reported to involve the offer of new land for homes for the younger voters in these areas. In the light of Malaysia’s middle-income trap problem, it is perhaps not surprising that FELDA, a celebrated resettlement programme, needs substantial new policies for its key youth demography.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The review and analysis of the FELDA Global Ventures public listing are derived from Khor (2012a, 2012b). The history of FELDA’s evolution was researched by the author for an unpublished academic work in 2002. The author would like to acknowledge the help of Ms Vasiliki Mavroeidi as research assistant. I would also like to thank the many sources who were interviewed on FELDA issues over the years. They wish to remain anonymous. Many have either worked at FELDA or are close FELDA watchers. Many admire and are proud of what FELDA has achieved for its settlers, but quite a few have reservations about how politicised FELDA has become in the last decade or so.

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References Abdul Rashid Moten (2009) ‘2004 and 2008 General Elections in Malaysia: Toward a Multicultural, Bi-Party Political System?’, Asian Journal of Political Science, 17(2): 173–94. Anon. (2002a) (development specialist, FELDA Group), personal interview, 25 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2002b) (development specialist, FELDA Group), personal interview, 25 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2002c) (support specialist, FELDA Group), personal interview, 26 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2002d) (replanting specialist, FELDA Group), personal interview, 27 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2002e) (business specialist, FELDA Group), personal interview, 27 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2012) (research analyst, independent), personal interview, 10 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013a) (research analyst, stockbrokerage), personal interview, 3 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013b) (research analyst, stockbrokerage), phone interview, 3 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013c) (research analyst, independent), personal interview, 16 February (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013d) (politician, Pakatan Rakyat), personal interview, 22 May (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013e) (politician, Pakatan Rakyat), interview by email, 22 May (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013f) (politician, Pakatan Rakyat), interview by email, 22 May (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013g) (political analyst, independent), personal interview, 17 June (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013h) (urban voter, professional, ethnic Malay), personal interview, 26 June (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013i) (urban voter, professional, ethnic Malay), personal interview, 26 June (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013j) (research specialist, Merdeka Centre), interview by email, 26 November (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013k) (political analyst), interview by email, 30 November (Kuala Lumpur). Anon. (2013l) (politician, Pakatan Rakyat), phone interview, 6 December (Kuala Lumpur).



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Anon. (2013m) (research specialist, Merdeka Centre), interview by email, 6 December (Kuala Lumpur). Arakaki, R. (2013) ‘Malaysia’s 2013 General Election and Its Democratic Prospects’, Asian Politics & Policy, 5(4): 689–92. Bahrin, T.S. and B.T. Lee (1988) FELDA: Three Decades of Evolution, Kuala Lumpur: FELDA. ——— (2006) FELDA’s Fifty Years: Pioneers to Investors, Kuala Lumpur: FELDA. Bloomberg (2012) ‘Financial data information terminal’, http://www.bloomberg.com/ professional/news-research/economics (accessed August 2012). Case, W. 2001 ‘Malaysia’s Resilient Pseudodemocracy’, Journal of Democracy, 12(1): 43–57. ——— (2009) ‘Electoral Authoritarianism in Malaysia: Trajectory Shift’, The Pacific Review, 22(3): 311–33. Chin, J. (2013) ‘So Close and Yet So Far: Strategies in the 13th Malaysian Elections’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 102(6): 533–40. Election Commission of Malaysia (2013) PRU ke-13, Helaian Mata (Score Sheet), Borang SPR 760 Pin. 1/99. Copies obtained via personal communication, May 2013. Fatimah Mohd Arshad and Mad Nasir Shamsudin (1997) Rural Development Model in Malaysia, Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Putra Malaysia, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201.7497&rep=rep1& type=pdf (accessed 17 December 2013). FELDA Global (2013) Annual Report 2012, http://ir.chartnexus.com/fgv/reports. php (accessed 12 December 2013). Forbes (2012) ‘Setting the Stage – Nazir Razak, CEO of Malaysia’s CIMB Bank’, 5 January. Gomez, E.T. (2007) ‘Resistance to change: Malay politics in Malaysia’, in E.T. Gomez (ed.), Politics in Malaysia: The Malay Dimension, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harakahdaily (2013) ‘Redelineation involving FELDA voters to deliver 20 more seats to BN?’, 15 May, http://en.harakahdaily.net/index.php/headline/7227redelineation-involving-felda-voters-to-deliver-20-more-seats-to-bn.html (accessed 10 December 2013). Ibrahim Ngah (2010) Rural Development in Malaysia. CIPD Monograph No. 5, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, http://www.academia.edu/400316/Rural_ Development_in_Malaysia (accessed 11 December 2013). ——— (2012) Rural Transformation Development, Centre for Innovative Planning and Development, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, http://www.epublication.fab. utm.my/348/1/RuralTransformation.pdf (accessed 11 December 2013).

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Jomo, K.S. (1990) Growth and Structural Change in the Malaysian Economy, London: Macmillan. Khor, Y-L. (2002) The FELDA Settler – An Uneven Path from Landless Poor to Shareholder?, unpublished manuscript. ——— (2012a) ‘FELDA Global – strong selling mopped up, uncertainty lingers’, Khor Reports, 12 August. ——— (2012b) ‘FELDA Settlers & the FELDA Global IPO – a socio-political perspective’, Khor Reports, 22 May. Lim, H-H. (2002) ‘Electoral Politics in Malaysia: “Managing” Elections in a Plural Society’, in Aurel Croissant, G. Bruns and M. John (eds), Electoral Politics in Southeast and East Asia, Singapore: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. Malaysia Chronicle (2013) ‘BN running scared! FELDA bans Anak from entering settlers camps before GE13’, 24 January, http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/ index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=47491:bn-running-scared-feldabans-anak-from-entering-settlers-camps-before-ge13&Itemid=2 (accessed 11 December 2013) Malaysiakini (2012) ‘Unlike his dad, Najib seen as destroying Felda’, 15 February, http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/189221 (accessed 20 December 2013). Malaysian Insider (2013) ‘PAS pushed for the FELDA vote, but didn’t get past the kitchen’, 12 August, http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/ pas-pushed-for-the-felda-vote-but-didnt-get-past-the-kitchen (accessed 20 December 2013). Means, G.P. (1996) ‘Soft Authoritarianism in Malaysia and Singapore’, Journal of Democracy, 7(4): 103–17. Merdeka Centre (2013) ‘Data for 258 FELDA voting districts in the GE13 parliamentary elections; by age cohort and by state’, 26 November (via personal communication). Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) (1999) Third National Agricultural Policy: 1998–2010, Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Agriculture Malaysia. MySinchew (2011) ‘12 of 18 lawsuits against FELDA settled so far’, 14 March, http:// www.mysinchew.com/node/54666 (accessed 10 December 2013). New Straits Times (2010) ‘Pas, PKR out to win FELDA settlers’ votes’, 23 July. ——— (2011) ‘Battle for the Malay vote’, 16 December. ——— (2013a) ‘Whopping RM105 mil interim dividend to over 79,000 FELCRA participants’, 19 July. ——— (2013b) ‘Call for land owners to let FELCRA develop idle land’, 28 June. Politweet.org https://politweet.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-rural-urban-dividein-malaysias-general-election/ (accessed August 2014).



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Roslan, A.H. (2001) ‘Income Inequality and Development Policy: The Case of Malaysia’; paper presented at the International Seminar on Poverty and Sustainable Development, 22–23 November 2001, organised by Université Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV and UNESCO-Paris, France. Scott, J.C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven: Yale University Press. Sivarasa R. (2012) ‘Another 770 settlers sue FELDA for fraud, claim RM422mil in losses’, Malaysia Chronicle, 26 April, http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index. php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=32816:another-770-settlers-sue-feldafor-fraud-claim-rm422mil-in-losses&Itemid=2 (accessed 10 December 2013). Star (2013a) ‘KPF approves FGV stake purchase’, 29 October. ——— (2013b) ‘Way clear for FELCRA listing. Its chairman, a successful MP in recent polls, to spearhead IPO’, 7 May. ——— (2013c) ‘GE13: Battle moves into plantations’, 20 April. ——— (2013d) 13th Malaysian General Election, http://elections.thestar.com.my (accessed July 2013). ——— (2013e) 12th Malaysian General Election, http://elections.thestar.com.my/ get12.aspx (accessed July 2013). Ufen, A. (2009) ‘The Transformation of Political Party Opposition in Malaysia and Its Implications for the Electoral Authoritarian Regime’, Democratization, 16(3): 604–27. Wong, C. (2012) ‘FELDA settlers entitled to RM50k not RM15k’, Malaysia Chronicle, 9 May, http://www.malaysia-chronicle.com/index.php?option=com_ k2&view=item&id=33115:felda-settlers-deserve-rm50k-not-rm15k-and-why-3instalments-what-if-bn-loses-ge-13?&Itemid=2. (accessed 12 December 2013). Wong, C.H., J. Chin and Norani Othman (2010) ‘Malaysia: Toward a Topology of an Electoral One-Party State’, Democratization, 17(5): 920–49. World Bank (1987) The Jengka Triangle Projects in Malaysia: Impact Evaluation Report. Washington D.C.: The World Bank.

Notes An earlier version of this article has been published in Kajian Malaysia, 32, Supp. 2 (2014): 111–44. The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks the permission of the Editors to reproduce this shorter version. 1 United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is the ruling ethnic-Malay party in the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957. Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) are two of three key component parties (the third is the Malaysian Chinese-centric Democratic Action Party) of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition

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alliance. PAS is an Islamist party which is stronger in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia, and PKR is the Malay-led multi-racial party headed by Anwar Ibrahim. 2 A search via Jstor on the general topic of FELDA’s role in electoral politics yielded 23 search results, dating from October 2012 back to 1974, with no directly relevant titles. This paper is therefore exploring a topic that has not been well-published. The author therefore relies on material from her own primary interviews and analysis of the palm oil sector, as well as information and interviews in the press. 3 Roslan (2001) recites a list that includes: a) government agencies already in existent in the 1960s such as FELDA, MARA (People’s Trust Council), FAMA (Food and Marketing Authority) and MARDI (Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute) which had strong funding; b) newer rural targeted agencies included RISDA (Rubber Industry Smallholders Development Authority), MAJUIKAN (Fisheries Board) and MAJUTERNAK (Cattle Board); and c) UDA (Urban Development Authority) and the SEDCs (State Economic Development Corporations) sought to promote commercial and industrial projects to help boost the success of the Bumiputera rural–urban shift. ‘Credit facilities, advisory services and the physical infrastructure such as shops and houses were also provided through agencies such as MARA, MIDF (Malaysian Industrial Development Foundation), CGC (Credit Guarantee Corporation) and Bank Bumiputera. Of significance in increasing Bumiputera participation and ownership in the economy was the establishment of PERNAS (Perbadanan Nasional or National Corporation).’ While newer programmes have been established, these remain the key agencies, with one notable change; Bank Bumiputera was eventually merged with CIMB Group in 2005 to creating a large new universal bank, making its CEO Nazir Razak, a brother of the Prime Minister, a multi-millionaire (Forbes, 2012). 4 FELDA Global Ventures Holdings Berhad (FELDA Global) is a Malaysian public-listed company whose key businesses comprise the commercial oil palm plantations of FELDA (on a long-term lease basis) and 49 per cent of the FELDA Group mills, downstream and ancillary businesses. At its initial public offering (IPO) in 2012, it raised RM4 billion. The 51 per cent owned by the Koperasi Permodalan FELDA (FELDA Investment Cooperative) at the time of the initial public offering (IPO) received final approval by its owners for its sale to FELDA Global in late 2013 (Star, 2013). FELDA Global plans to expand its plantation areas by investing globally, and by 2020 it seeks to achieve one million hectares of harvest from its own estates as well as FELDA smallholders (FELDA Global, 2012). The company, with over 340,000 hectares of planted area, has a stock



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market capitalisation of RM16.8 billion. This may be compared with the higher RM26.2 billion market capitalisation of another integrated palm oil plantation group, Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd which had a smaller 212,000 hectares of planted area in 2012 (stock market indicators from Bloomberg.com website, accessed 12 December 2013). 5 FELDA took the step of banning ANAK from entering FELDA areas and the opposition coalition from holding rallies in its areas prior to the GE13 campaigning period. ‘Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Ahmad Maslan, who is also in charge of FELDA affairs, has confirmed that PASlinked NGO Anak is allowed to enter FELDA territory only during the election campaign period. He said the ban on Anak from entering areas managed by FELDA comes under the Land (Group Settlement Areas) Act 1960’ (Malaysia Chronicle, 2013). 6 The FELDA Global IPO shares allocation saw 87 per cent reserved for Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI)-approved (relatively well-off ) Bumiputera and other institutional investors. Out of the grand total of 2,189 million IPO shares, the author’s estimate of the likely ‘loose holders’ (shorter-term investors) were 693.1 million shares in the following categories: a) Malaysian public*, 73 million; b) FELDA settlers*, 91.2 million; c) FELDA employees & persons who contributed*, 109.4 million; d) MITI-approved special Bumiputera investors**, 419.5 million, i.e. allocated 4.6 times more shares than FELDA settlers (note: *retail investors **institutional investors). Thus, ‘loose holders’ have 32 per cent of total IPO shares. FELDA Global was listed on 28 June 2012; the retail portion was priced at RM4.45/share and the institutional portion RM4.55/share. On listing day the price was ramped up. A high of RM5.51 was reached on 5 July 2012. Since mid-August 2012 the FELDA Global share price has sunk further, dipping below the IPO price several times. It has valiantly hovered above RM4.50 in a tight trading range since mid-May 2013. Data from key state-controlled pension funds, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (KWAP, the civil servants retirement fund) indicate that they have been strong key buyers of FELDA Global shares since its listing (Bloomberg, 2012) and while its shares have sunk to IPO price. Analysts were lacklustre on FELDA Global’s outlook due to its unusually aged tree profile (Anon., 2012). It requires massive replanting and this implies flat / no growth in CPO production. FELDA Global is expected to spend its cash pile on various mergers and acquisitions to generate better earnings. 7 In a recent lawsuit led by Sivarasa – there are several where he is lead counsel – there are complaints over an average 18.5 per cent OER received by the settlers. The lawsuit argues that they should receive 8.5 per cent-age points more as

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‘random tests by FELDA settlers in Jengka with independent laboratories to assess the actual rate of the OER showed a much higher average rate of 27 per cent’ (Sivarasa, 2012). This forms the bulk of the financial claims. It is notable that Malaysia-wide OER statistics published by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) ranged about 20.2–20.6 per cent in 2012, significantly lower than the 27 per cent mentioned. A key landmark case is the Kemahang 3 FELDA scheme in Kelantan winning a case against FELDA over ‘cheating’ in the OER. In January 2010 the Federal Court ordered FELDA to pay RM11 million in damages to the settlers there. 8 Najib’s administration announced on 9 May 2012 the allocation of a windfall from the listing, totalling RM1.689 billion, for each of the 112,635 first-generation settlers in 317 FELDA schemes. 9 Malaysia’s Election Commission does not itself publish a list of seat names in each zoning, nor does it provide details for the basis of this zoning. It does not provide the quality and quantity of information, including electoral boundaries in soft copy, which is necessary for many researchers to make thorough and detailed studies. 10 Geospatial electoral studies and political analysis in Malaysia seem to be in their early stages and are often hindered by lack of access to freely available public information (including Election Commission boundary map vectors and registered voter numbers data, Department of Census data, and information from other government agencies, including FELDA). For a detailed study of FELDA areas’ voting behaviour, the maps of FELDA land schemes should be prepared in a geospatial analysis together with their estimated population and voter base (current and past) in order to identify their location in the GE13 electoral boundaries and similarly for past general elections. Such geospatial and quantitative work is beyond the scope of this paper. In order to illustrate FELDA’s importance in Malaysia’s electoral politics, the author presents some illustrative information, data context and case studies. 11 The GE13 voting results for the three case studies show a 2–3 per cent-age point difference between Parliamentary and state voting results, down from a 1–16 per cent-age point difference in the previous general elections, with a tendency for BN to gain higher votes in Parliamentary versus state voting. 12 The swing is calculated using the Butler method. It is worth making a comparison with other FELDA-dominant Pahang state seats; Chini and Muadzam Shah in Pahang are rated as 70–80 per cent FELDA (interviewee M11-OE, 22 May 2013). In the state seat contest for Chini, BN won with a bigger majority of 7,678 or 48 per cent (votes counted 15,983; +56 per cent on 2008 votes); the 2008 BN majority was 4,524 or 44 per cent (votes counted 10,272). The swing was 2.1 per



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cent toward BN, while the number of voters and votes ballooned. Chini is located in the Parliamentary seat of Pekan, which is Najib Razak’s constituency. The Muadzam Shah seat saw a larger 5 per cent swing toward BN, while the number of votes recorded increased by 48 per cent. This comparison between 2008 and 2013 voting results uses data presented in the website of The Star (Star, 2013d; Star, 2013e).

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Chapter 6

Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13 Maznah Mohamad

INTRODUCTION For some analysts, the features of Malaysia’s 13th general election (GE13) showed little change in terms of the predictability of ethnic voting, with the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) winning the bulk of Malay-majority seats and the Democratic Action Party (DAP) the lion’s share of Chinese-majority seats (Chin, 2013; Case, 2013).1 But this outcome belied the campaign atmosphere before the polls. Supporters of the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (PR), were especially sanguine that GE13 would defy the ethnic pattern of voting. Thus there were energetic, spirited and confident shows of a projected victory by PR, buoyed by the massive turnouts at ceramah across urban sites throughout the country. Polls conducted before the election predicted the closest of contests between Barisan Nasional (BN) and the opposition coalition (see, for example. press reports on the eve of the election by Aisehman (2013) and Chan (2013)). As far as PR supporters were concerned, the denial of the two-thirds majority to BN was a foregone conclusion. The clarion calls of ‘Ubah’ (Change), ‘Ini Kalilah’ (This is the Time) and ‘Tawan Putrajaya’ (Capture Putrajaya) were some of PR’s bold campaign slogans. In 2008, when PR least expected to win something substantial, it won an improbable more than one-third of the Parliamentary seats. In 2013 it was anticipating nothing less than a victory. The opposition coalition placed their hopes for an overall win around an evident split in the Malay vote. But this did not deliver an adequate effect as

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UMNO, as the main player of BN, seemed to have won a distinctly ‘intact’ Malay bloc with 88 seats. But did UMNO win these seats on the basis of its ethnic appeal? In addressing this question, this chapter maps out the features of Malaymajority Parliamentary seats, or seats with more than 50 per cent registered Malay voters. Malay-majority seats must be understood by more specific characteristics other than just their rural or urban features. Of importance are their structural and organisational specificities. I am interested to uncover the factors which allowed some seats to remain as virtually the perpetual vote bank of UMNO and BN, while others could pendulously shift from one party to another. Two variables will be examined here. First, the infrastructural component and second, the mobilisation element within each seat. All these are intimately related to the notion of a vote bank, a concept referring to a captive voter community which can be mobilised to cast their vote for a particular party or candidate (Bailey, 1963). The presence of a vote bank creates a doubt as to whether a factor such as ethnicity, or Malayness per se, is crucial in determining whether UMNO, the dominant Malay party in BN, gets elected in every electoral competition. My contention is that if the infrastructure and mode of mobilisation are examined in each electoral constituency it is possible to say that voting preference is not always reducible to ethnicity and its presumed association with group solidarity, but rather to voters in a state of structural captivity. The central problem posed by this chapter is the existence of what we could call the FELDA seats, or Parliamentary constituencies within a land scheme that comprises settlers, or voters, managed by FELDA (Federal Land Development GE13. Although rural seats were equally important in providing UMNO with its raison d’être, or its purpose as a Malay party, the FELDA factor may be even more crucial to the long-term survival of the party. In the FELDA seats, UMNO found the ideal elements for the capture of a vote bank. To detail the above, the chapter begins by providing a general overview of the FELDA schemes. Then it will provide a methodological explanation of how specific seats – rural, urban, Malay-majority and FELDA seats – are identified within the delineated constituency boundaries. The chapter then proceeds by discussing the outcome of GE13 that is specific to the Malay-majority seats. We then focus on how the FELDA seats fared in



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relation to the performance of BN (specifically UMNO) and PR. This will be followed by an analysis of the infrastructural and mobilisation elements present within the FELDA schemes, making them a ready-made vote bank, providing a structurally captured Malay voting bloc for UMNO. The chapter concludes by questioning the sustainability of this system and the extent to which the pattern of fielding ethnic candidates in accordance with the ethnic demographic feature of the constituency will persist.

FELDA SCHEMES AND THE FELDA FACTOR FELDA is a statutory institution set up by the government in 1956 to resettle poor, and often landless, Malay farmers in new land schemes developed for commercial agriculture. By alienating these landholdings for the scheme, state governments forgo their rights over the land to federal control, which manages these schemes through FELDA. Over several decades this has involved the relocation of some 120,000 families into land schemes that have generated profits and incomes through the cultivation of commercial crops such as oil palm and rubber (Shamsul and Perera, 1977; Sutton, 1989; Halim, 1991; Khor, 2014). FELDA has also evolved from functioning as a land settlement agency to a plantation company (Sutton and Amriah, 1995) and finally into a public-listed global corporation, FELDA Global Ventures (FGV) (Khor, 2014). But while the economic implications of the FELDA developmental project is a much-studied phenomenon, its political significance in election periods is not as well-explored, apart from studies by Rashila (2003) of women voters and a recent study by Khor (2014). Following Khor’s detailed and rich documentation of the history of FELDA and its implications on GE13, the analysis in this chapter also points to the distinct correlation between FELDA constituencies (where the settlement schemes are located) and seats won by UMNO, the leading Malay party, and its umbrella organisation, BN. The preponderance of FELDA constituencies as a voting bloc, whether created by gerrymandering or otherwise, where number of voters can be disproportionately lower than urban constituencies (see Ostwald, 2013), is arguably the most important determinant of continuing Malay support for UMNO. FELDA schemes encompass 852,566 hectares of land, an equivalent of 16 per cent of cultivated area in the country (Information Malaysia Year Book, 2001). According to a 1988 record there were already 100,000 settler

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families throughout the Peninsula (cited in Halim, 1991: 328), which added up to ‘an on-scheme population of about 500,000, making FELDA a major world example of rural resettlement’ (Sutton, 1989: 342). In West Malaysia the largest spread of land schemes can be found in Pahang and Johor. Some general observations related to Malay-majority seats and UMNO’s performance can be summed up as follows: First, UMNO largely won in the Malay-majority rural seats (see Figure 6.1). The majority of these rural seats (see Figure 6.2 and Table 6.1) are located within FELDA settlements. Among rural seats, FELDA seats won by UMNO were disproportionately higher than those won by PR. However, among Malay-majority urban seats (see Figure 6.3) UMNO and PR won an almost equal number. Malay-majority seats which are both rural and FELDA-based are thus crucial for UMNO to continue winning the fragmented Malay vote, which is divided between UMNO, PAS (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia) and PKR (Parti Keadilan Rakyat). What then enables FELDA seats to provide UMNO with its continuing Malay voting bloc? The commonplace assumption is that FELDA seats have the typical features of rurality, with their voters simple villagers and peasants who do not have access to the information bank, thus limiting their capacity to make informed choices in every general election. I argue that in actual fact FELDA seats are not typically rural seats and neither is UMNO’s ability to hold on to this vote bank a function of rural gullibility, ignorance, apathy or misinformation among the Malay voters. Figure 6.1: Malay-Majority Rural and Urban Seats won by BN & PR, Peninsular Malaysia



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Figure 6.2: Malay-Majority Rural Constituencies: Felda and Non-Felda Parliamentary Seats Won by BN and PR

Figure 6.3: Malay-Majority Urban and Semi-Urban Constituencies: Felda and Non-Felda Parliamentary Seats Won by BN and PR

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Table 6.1: Malay-Majority Rural Seats (with >50% registered Malay voters) Parliamentary Seats

Constituency

Seat Type

Malay Voters %

Party

FELDA

86

UMNO

BN Seats 1.

PADANG BESAR

2.

ARAU

-

88

UMNO

3.

LANGKAWI

-

91

UMNO

4.

JERLUN

FELDA

91

UMNO

5.

PADANG TERAP

FELDA

92

UMNO

6.

PENDANG

FELDA

88

UMNO

7.

JERAI

-

79

UMNO

8.

SIK

FELDA

93

UMNO

9.

BALING

-

89

UMNO

10.

KETEREH

-

97

UMNO

11.

TANAH MERAH

FELDA

95

UMNO

12.

MACHANG

-

96

UMNO

13.

JELI

-

99

UMNO

14.

GUA MUSANG

FELDA

80

UMNO

15.

SETIU

FELDA

80

UMNO

16.

HULU TERENGGANU

FELDA

99

UMNO

17.

KEPALA BATAS

-

76

UMNO

18.

TASEK GELUGOR

-

78

UMNO

19.

BALIK PULAU

-

64

UMNO

20.

GERIK

FELDA

68

UMNO

21.

LENGGONG

FELDA

82

UMNO

22.

LARUT

FELDA

89

UMNO

23.

BAGAN SERAI

-

76

UMNO

24.

PADANG RENGAS

-

76

UMNO

25.

PARIT

-

93

UMNO

26.

PASIR SALAK

-

79

UMNO

27.

BAGAN DATOK

-

55

UMNO

28.

TANJONG MALIM

FELDA

53

MCA

29.

LIPIS

FELDA

76

UMNO



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Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

30.

JERANTUT

FELDA

81

UMNO

31.

PAYA BESAR

FELDA

81

UMNO

32.

PEKAN

FELDA

81

UMNO

33.

MARAN

FELDA

88

UMNO

34.

KUALA KRAU

FELDA

90

UMNO

35.

BERA

FELDA

45

UMNO

36.

ROMPIN

FELDA

87

UMNO

37.

SABAK BERNAM

-

81

UMNO

38.

SUNGAI BESAR

-

66

UMNO

39.

TANJONG KARANG

-

72

UMNO

40.

KUALA SELANGOR

FELDA

64

UMNO

41.

JELEBU

FELDA

63

UMNO

42.

JEMPOL

FELDA

60

UMNO

43.

TAMPIN

FELDA

61

UMNO

44.

MASJID TANAH

-

82

UMNO

45.

ALOR GAJAH

FELDA

59

UMNO

46.

JASIN

FELDA

71

UMNO

47.

SEKIJANG

FELDA

56

UMNO

48.

PAGOH

FELDA

64

UMNO

49.

LEDANG

FELDA

53

UMNO

50.

MUAR

51.

PARIT SULONG

52.

-

62

UMNO

FELDA

72

UMNO

AYER HITAM

-

56

MCA

53.

SRI GADING

FELDA

63

UMNO

54.

SIMPANG RENGGAM

FELDA

57

UMNO

55.

SEMBRONG

FELDA

58

UMNO

56.

MERSING

-

79

UMNO

57.

TENGGARA

FELDA

72

UMNO

58.

KOTA TINGGI

FELDA

86

UMNO

59.

PENGERANG

FELDA

88

UMNO

60.

PONTIAN

-

69

UMNO

61.

TANJONG PIAI

-

51

MCA

*

*

*

*

*

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Coalitions in Collision

PR SEATS 62.

POKOK SENA

-

80

PAS

63.

TUMPAT

-

93

PAS

64.

PASIR MAS

-

97

PAS

65.

RANTAU PANJANG

FELDA

98

PAS

66.

KUBANG KERIAN

-

98

PAS

67.

PASIR PUTEH

-

98

PAS

68.

KUALA KRAI

-

94

PAS

69.

KUALA NERUS

FELDA

99

PAS

70.

MARANG

FELDA

98

PAS

71.

PARIT BUNTAR

-

68

PAS

72.

BUKIT GANTANG

-

65

PAS

73.

KUALA KEDAH

-

78

PKR

74.

RAUB

FELDA

50

DAP

NOTE: Total Malay-majority rural seats = 74 BN-won seats = 61 or 82% of all rural seats; 37 FELDA seats or 50% of all rural seats PR-won seats = 13 or 18% of all rural seats; 4 FELDA seats or 5% of all rural seats

Table 6.2: Malay-Majority Urban and Semi-urban Parliamentary Seats Parliamentary Constituency

% Malay Vote

Party Won

BN-Won 1.

Kangar

75.6

UMNO

2.

Kubang Pasu

95.7

UMNO

3.

Merbok

FELDA

65.7

UMNO

4.

Kulim - Bandar Baharu

FELDA

69.5

UMNO

5.

Besut

FELDA

97.8

UMNO

FELDA

6.

Kemaman

91.9

UMNO

7.

Tambun

64.1

UMNO

8.

Kuala Kangsar

66.3

UMNO

9.

Indera Mahkota

65.4

UMNO



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

10.

Hulu Selangor

11.

Setiawangsa

12.

Titiwangsa

13.

Putrajaya

14.

Kuala Pilah

15.

Rembau

16.

Tangga Batu

17.

Johor Bahru

18.

FELDA

53.9

MIC

56.4

UMNO

65

UMNO

93.5

UMNO

77.1

UMNO

68.9

UMNO

69

UMNO

51

UMNO

Pulai

50.8

UMNO

19.

Alor Setar

62.6

PKR

20.

Sungai Petani

59.8

PKR

21.

Pengkalan Chepa

97.8

PAS

22.

Kota Bharu

80.6

PAS

23.

Bachok

98.4

PAS

24.

Kuala Terengganu

88.1

PAS

25.

Dungun

26.

Permatang Pauh

27.

Kuantan

FELDA

PR-Won

FELDA

FELDA

95.4

PAS

68.5

PKR

60

PKR

28.

Temerloh

63.4

PAS

29.

Gombak

76

PKR

30.

Ampang

56.2

PKR

31.

Subang

50

PKR

32.

Shah Alam

68.8

PAS

33.

Kapar

51.4

PKR

34.

Kuala Langat

55.3

PKR

35.

Sepang

58.7

PAS

36.

Wangsa Maju

51.1

PKR

37.

Lembah Pantai

52.8

PKR

38.

Bandar Tun Razak

51.7

PKR

39.

Bukit Katil

53.2

PKR

40.

Batu Pahat

52.8

PKR

NOTE: Total Malay-majority urban and semi-urban seats = 40 BN-Won = 18 (6 FELDA seats) (45%) PR-Won = 22 (2 FELDA seats) (55%)

131

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Coalitions in Collision

IDENTIFICATION OF RURAL, URBAN AND FELDA SEATS To establish the above point, I first distinguish rural seats from urban seats based on a classification done by Politweet, a web-based research firm2 which uses Twitter and Facebook to monitor politics and activism. Politweet describes itself as ‘a non-partisan research firm analysing interactions among Malaysians using social media’.3 Based on its classification of urban and rural seats,4 I further refine their division by extracting seats which have more than 50 per cent registered Malay voters. This is then used to draw up a list of both rural and urban Malay-majority seats in the Peninsula (see constituencies in Tables 6.1 and 6.2). Based on the above, we can identify 74 rural and 40 urban or semiurban Malay-majority constituencies in the last GE. Out of these 74 rural seats, UMNO/BN won 61 seats (three won by MCA candidates) or almost 82 per cent. The Peninsular rural seats won by UMNO/BN constitute 27 per cent of all Parliamentary seats in Malaysia. The PR coalition won only 13 of the rural Malay-majority seats or about 8 per cent of all Malay-majority seats. Far fewer than the number of Malay-majority rural seats delineated by the Election Commission (EC) are the Malay-majority urban seats. There were only 40 of these seats; 18 were won by UMNO/BN. PAS and PKR won the other 22 seats (PAS, 8 and PKR, 14). This outcome indicates that the proportion of urban Malay vote capture is about equal for BN and PR. PR had made great headway among urban Malay voters, winning even four seats more than the BN within this category of constituency differentiation. There is no definitive listing of what and where these FELDA Parliamentary seats are located, as the numbers have varied from one source to another. For example, Liow (2013) mentions the ‘70-odd FELDA seats’ as the crucial seats for UMNO. But numbers mentioned by two authoritative sources, Tan Sri Yusof Nor, a former chairman of FELDA (New Straits Times, 2011), and Mazlan Aliman, president of ANAK FELDA (an association for the children of FELDA settlers) (Malaysian Insider, 2011) estimate the FELDA seats as comprising 54 Parliamentary constituencies. As to state seats, Tan Sri Yusof Nor stated the number as 100, while Mazlan noted that there are 92 of these seats. However, there has been scant or no information about the names and location of these seats. In order to locate these constituencies a map showing the distribution of FELDA plantations and landholdings is juxtaposed upon an electoral



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

133

delineation map of the various Parliamentary constituencies, with a notation of which ones were won by BN or PR in GE13.5 A mapping of all ten states with these characteristics allows us to identify which Parliamentary constituencies can be identified as the FELDA seats. In Maps 6.1–6.4, it can thus be verified that there are indeed 54 ‘FELDA’ Parliamentary seats in the Peninsula. Table 6.3 lists the names of the constituencies, the percentage of registered Malay voters within each and the party which won these seats. Table 6.3: FELDA Parliamentary Seats, Peninsular Malaysia Parliamentary Seats

Name

Party Won

Notes

Perlis (1) 1.

P1

Padang Besar

BN

Kedah (8) 2.

P5

Jerlun

BN

3.

P6

Kubang Pasu

BN

4.

P7

Padang Terap

BN

5.

P11

Pendang

BN

PAS (2008)

6.

P13

Sik

BN

PAS (2008)

7.

P14

Merbok

BN

PKR (2008)

8.

P16

Baling

BN

Marginally FELDA

9.

P18

Kulim-Bandar Baharu

BN

PKR (2008)

PKR (2008)

Kelantan (2) 10.

P27

Tanah Merah

BN

11.

P32

Gua Musang

BN

Terengganu (7) 12.

P33

Besut

BN

13.

P34

Setiu

BN

14.

P35

Kuala Nerus

PAS

15.

P37

Marang

PAS

16.

P38

Hulu Terengganu

BN

BN (2008)

134

Coalitions in Collision

17.

P39

Dungun

PAS

18.

P40

Kemaman

BN

BN (2008)

Perak (5) 19.

P54

Gerik

BN

20.

P55

Lenggong

BN

21.

P56

Larut

BN

22.

P62

Sungai Siput

DAP

33% Malay voters

23.

P77

Tanjong Malim

BN (MCA)

53% Malay voters

BN (MIC)

34% Malay voters 50% Malay voters

Pahang (12) 24.

P78

Cameron Highlands

25.

P79

Lipis

26.

P80

Raub

DAP

27.

P81

Jerantut

BN

28.

P84

Paya Besar

BN

29.

P85

Pekan

BN

30.

P86

Maran

BN

31.

P87

Kuala Krau

BN

32.

P88

Temerloh

PAS

33.

P89

Bentong

BN

34.

P90

Bera

BN

35.

P91

Rompin

BN

Selangor (2) 36.

P94

Hulu Selangor

37.

P96

Kuala Selangor BN

BN

Negeri Sembilan (4) 38.

P126

Jelebu

BN

39.

P127

Jempol

BN

40.

P129

Kuala Pilah

BN

41.

P133

Tampon

BN



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

135

Malacca (2) 42.

P135

Alor Gajah

BN

43.

P139

Jasin

BN

Johor (11) 44.

P140

Segamat

BN

45.

P141

Sekijang

BN

46.

P143

Pagoh

BN

47.

P151

Simpang Renggam

BN

48.

P153

Sembrong

BN

49.

P154

Mersing

BN

50.

P155

Tenggara

BN

51.

P156

Kota Tinggi

BN

52.

P157

Pengerang

BN

53.

P158

Tebrau

BN

Marginal; 47% Malay voters

54.

P163

Kulai

DAP

33% Malay voters

NOTE: Total Felda seats: 54 (100%) Seats won by BN = 46 (85%) Seats won by PR = 8 (15%)

44% Malay voters

136

Coalitions in Collision

Map 6.1: Pahang and Johor: FELDA Plantations and Landholdings within Delineated Constituencies (Courtesy of Merdeka Centre)

Pahang

Legend 0

PLANTATIONS

0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PRSEAT



137

Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

Johor

',

Legend 0 0 -

PLANTATIONS SMALL HOLDING BNSEAT PR SEAT

138

Coalitions in Collision

Map 6.2: Kedah and Terengganu: FELDA Plantations and Smallholdings by Delineated Constituencies (Courtesy of Merdeka Centre)

Kedah

Legend 0

PLANTATIONS

0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PRSEAT



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

Terengganu

•

Legend 0

PLANTATIONS

0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PRSEAT

139

140

Coalitions in Collision

Map 6.3: Perak, Kelantan: FELDA Smallholdings and Plantations (Courtesy of Merdeka Centre)

Perak

Legend PLANTATIONS 0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PR SEAT



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

Kelantan

Legend PLANTATIONS

0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PRSEAT

141

142

Coalitions in Collision

Map 6.4: Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and Selangor: FELDA Smallholdings and Plantations (Courtesy of Merdeka Centre)

Negeri Sembilan

Legend

-

e

PLANTATIONS

0

SMALL HOLDI NG BNSEAT PRSEAT



Malacca

Legend

0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PRSEAT

Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

143

144

Coalitions in Collision

Map 6.4 (cont.)

Selangor

Legend 0

PLANTATIONS

0

SMALL HOLDING

-

BNSEAT

-

PRSEAT



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

145

ANALYSIS OF RURAL, URBAN AND FELDA SEATS IN THE GE13 RESULTS Pahang, Johor and Negeri Sembilan are the three states with the largest number of FELDA schemes and settler households (Sutton 1989: 342). As to be expected, Pahang and Johor also have the largest concentration of FELDA Parliamentary seats; Pahang has 12 delineated constituencies housing FELDA schemes within their boundaries and Johor has 11 seats (see Map 6.1 for Pahang and Johor). It is perhaps not a coincidence that Johor has remained the bastion of UMNO and its other component parties within BN (particularly MCA – Malaysian Chinese Association), while Pahang has produced two prime ministers for the country. The states with the third and fourth highest number of FELDA seats are Kedah with eight seats and Terengganu with seven seats (see Table 6.3 and Map 6.2 for Kedah and Terengganu). The fifth highest presence of FELDA seats is in Perak with five seats (Map 6.3) followed by Negeri Sembilan with four seats (Map 6.4). Kelantan, Selangor and Malacca have two FELDA seats each, while Perlis has one constituency with FELDA settlements (see Map 6.3 for Kelantan, Map 6.4 for Selangor and Malacca and Map 6.2 for Perlis). Table 6.3 notes that BN won 47 (87%) of the 54 FELDA seats, while PR only managed to win seven seats (13% of the total). In Kedah, BN recaptured four FELDA seats which had been won by PAS and PKR in the 2008 election, while in Kelantan BN also recaptured one seat from PKR’s 2008 win. Unlike Johor, in which all 11 seats were won by BN, in Pahang two FELDA Parliamentary seats were captured by PR – Raub and Temerloh. The Raub constituency, where Malays constitute 50% of registered voters, was won by Mohd Arif Sabri, a Malay DAP candidate, against Hoh Khai Mun from MCA. Temerloh was won narrowly (with a 1070 vote margin) by Nasrudin Hassan from PAS, against a strong UMNO contender, Saifuddin Abdullah. Johor is extensively dotted by FELDA schemes, especially in the central and eastern areas. All seats were won by BN with the exception of Kulai which was won by Teo Nie Ching from DAP. However, Malays make up 33% of Kulai’s registered voters. Terengganu, which has the fourth largest concentration of FELDA seats (seven), was a most challenging state for BN as three FELDA seats – Kuala Nerus, Marang and Dungun – were won by PAS. Unlike Terengganu, in Kedah all eight FELDA seats (including

146

Coalitions in Collision

Baling which is marginally within FELDA settlements) were won by BN. By recapturing four of these seats from PAS and PKR, BN also recaptured the state government. BN won both the FELDA seats in Kelantan, Tanah Merah and Gua Musang. Seats like Tanah Merah and Rantau Panjang are marginally FELDA as the schemes are bunched around their delineation borders contiguous with that of Jeli. Not surprisingly, the seats could swing either way towards BN or PR. In the 2008 GE Tanah Merah was won by PKR. In 2013 PAS retained the Rantau Panjang seat. There are five FELDA seats in Perak. PR won one seat, Sungai Siput, the traditional seat of the MIC and its long-time president Samy Vellu. This seat was won in 2008 and 2013 by Michael Kumar Devaraj from PSM who contested under the PKR banner in 2013. In this FELDA seat, Malays make up 33 per cent, while Indians make up a substantial 31 per cent of registered voters. Despite being a small state, the northeastern side of Negeri Sembilan is extensively dotted with FELDA land schemes. The state’s four FELDA seats were all secured by BN. Although Malacca is a small state it has two FELDA seats, which have remained as a BN bastion. The constituency of Alor Gajah has 59 per cent Malay voters while Jasin has 71 per cent. In contrast, despite being a large state there are only two FELDA seats in Selangor: Hulu Selangor and Kuala Selangor constituencies, with 53.9 per cent and 64 per cent Malay voters respectively. Both seats, which were narrowly won by BN, are located in the northern section, at the periphery of the urbanised state. Finally, Perlis, the smallest state in the Peninsula, has only one FELDA seat, won by BN. A glance of the Peninsular Malaysia map (Map 6.5) showing distribution of seats between BN and PR and the location of FELDA schemes shows an almost perfect correlation between BN seats with the ubiquity of FELDA schemes, and on the obverse side, PR seats with the absence of these land schemes. Hence, while socio-cultural factors (including the promise of continuing Malay rule and more Islamisation) are strong persuasive reasons for Malay support for UMNO, the politically driven economic geography of UMNO’s Malay vote bank could be an even more significant explanation for UMNO’s performance in GE13. This same factor also provided the greatest setback to PR in its goal of capturing a Parliamentary majority. BN’s loss of its two-thirds Parliamentary majority was due to the overwhelming swing of urban and Chinese-majority



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

147

Map 6.5: Peninsular Malaysia: Distribution of Constituencies Won by BN and PR (Courtesy of Merdeka Centre)

Legend

e e -

PLANTATIONS SMALL HOLDING BN seat PR seat

148

Coalitions in Collision

seats to the opposition coalition, but this was insufficient to deny BN its dominance as there are more rural seats than urban seats in both West and East Malaysia. But it must also be emphasised that the majority of Malaymajority rural seats are also the FELDA seats. In the Peninsula, winning these seats substantially contributed to UMNO’s and BN’s win.

THE CAPTURED RURAL-CORPORATISED MALAY VOTE Through the FELDA land schemes a literal territorial vault has been carved, making the seats within them a secure vote bank for UMNO. When these schemes were created in the mid-1950s, the Alliance coalition (consisting of UMNO, MCA and MIC) seems to have planned their electoral strategy around the political benefit of votes in exchange for land. At that time, PMIP (Pan-Malayan Islamic Party, the then PAS) was the only contender for UMNO in the capture of Malay votes. Giving out land titles to landless and poor peasants in return for their votes was one of UMNO’s most effective strategies to defeat its rival. However, alienating and surrendering state land for federal control under FELDA was not something to which all states would readily accede. Kelantan and Terengganu, the two states which had come under PMIP rule at some time, were most reluctant to give up their land for the resettlement scheme. An intriguing study, circa 1970, by Dorothy Guyot, an American scholar, detailed how the FELDA politics of land in exchange for votes was played out in Terengganu when the PMIP was defeated by UMNO in 1961. This was followed by the opening of 7,500 acres of land in the first year, and another 11,000 acres in the second year. Thirteen schemes were established in the UMNO stronghold in Kemaman district. Guyot concluded that this ‘probably contributed to the 1964 Alliance sweep of 21 out of 24 seats in the state assembly – a mighty majority compared to the meagre seven Alliance had won in the previous election’ (n.d.: 4). Guyot’s study also observed how this politics of ‘land disbursement’ had occurred in Johor, where even the Chinese were given land in return for support and votes for MCA. In Johor, the study found that the Chinese received more land schemes in this state than in any other, with even the proportion of Chinese population in the state less than ‘their share in unsubsidised schemes’ (ibid., 23). Even the Indian-led party, People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which had strong support in Perak, seemed to want



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

149

to capitalise on the land-for-votes scheme. In 1964 voters in Terengganu were promised the East-West highway which would link the constituency of V.T. Sambanthan (an Alliance minister) in Sungai Siput to Kuala Bruang in Terengganu (the seat which Alliance had hoped to capture in the 1964 election) (Guyot, citing the Straits Times, 10 April 1963: 5). The success of these schemes lay in their capacity to lift Malay peasants out of their poverty. Large tracts of these lands were used for the cultivation of oil palm. As the price of oil palm rose over the years, the settlers reaped healthy returns for their labour. In 2012, just a few months before GE13, FELDA restructured itself by converting the status of settlers from cultivators to shareholders of a privatisation exercise involving the acquisition of FELDA under a corporation, FELDA Global Ventures (FGV). The corporatised village in which the chain of command and control can be executed with ease and efficiency is what keeps FELDA voters, as clients, beholden to their patron, UMNO, which is interchangeably recognised as the government. Thus FELDA has created for UMNO a kind of clientelist politics, in which goods or services are exchanged for political support, making voters accountable to politicians (for continued loyalty in exchange for income and dividends), instead of the other way round. As aptly noted by a study on clientelism, this is due to ‘fear that her individual voting decision may result in material gains or losses… wherein politicians are able to hold voters to account for voters’ behavior, rather than the reverse’ (Weitz-Shapiro, 2012: 568–9). The FELDA factor represents the workings of a crucial vote bank in Malaysian electoral politics, a concept first used by F.G. Bailey (1963) in his study of village politics in India. Inherent in the concept is the idea of voting being a reciprocal service between politicians and voters, though the two may not necessarily be in unity with a common goal, and where voters actually think of giving the vote as ‘a small thing’, a small favour in exchange for other benefits. The decision to vote is not an individualised choice, but determined by intermediaries and brokers who mobilise voting along some traditional interests or lines of narration to support a particular candidate or party. However, this can only happen when there is a high degree of integration within the constituency. Jena and Baral (1979: 395) further identify an ‘infrastructural group’ which provides ease for brokers to mobilise and influence, if not a direct choice in favour of a specific candidate

150

Coalitions in Collision

in the polls. All of these features are present in FELDA settlements, where the JKKR (jawatankuasa kerja raya – village development committee) not only manages the settlements but performs crucial administrative duties in acting as the payroll office, disbursing wages, dividends and payments. In FELDA schemes, internal integration is provided by two sets of twin burdens. The first is control and protection. The second is dependency and indebtedness. Control and protection is provided by the organisational structure within each settlement. The land schemes are divided into ‘self-contained units’ of about 400 families each with an office manager and his assistants to oversee the daily operations of the scheme (Rashila, 2003:132–3). The scheme is further divided into a ‘block’ system where social cohesion is created out of a block of 20 families, headed by elected male and female leaders, who receive advice from a FELDA officer known as the Settler Development Officer (SDO). Social activities, particularly festivities, are organised within this system (Rashila 2003: 133). Finally, political solidarity and control are exercised through the direct presence of UMNO, with branches of the political party set up in all the FELDA schemes. It is the FELDA officials who actually dictate their choice of party officials, preferring people who show ‘complete loyalty to UMNO’ (ibid.). To ensure this, the party branch is usually headed by the vice chairman of the JKKR (ibid.). The latter is an appointed body with salaried officials and is akin to a local government within the scheme. On the burden of dependency and indebtedness, settlers are captured clients of FELDA, the agency, and now the corporation. Since FELDA settlers are not independent cultivators – but actually work for the corporation – there is little autonomy in their economic lives. Operating costs are deducted from a settler’s income. However, this is only done if the income exceeds a certain minimum living wage level. When there is an adverse commodity price crisis, the debt collection is stopped. Additionally, a cash advance or food credit will be disbursed in order to maintain the settler’s income at a minimum level or even to help prevent starvation. However, these will be added to their accumulated debt level, which they are expected to repay when the commodity price rises, hence ‘pushing them into a state of perpetual indebtedness’ (Halim, 1991: 331).



Fragmented but Captured: Malay Voters and the FELDA Factor in GE13

151

This state of indebtedness has continued during the latest corporatisation exercise through the FGV. The latter secured RM350 million financing from a 10-bank consortium to provide loans to FELDA settlers for their purchase of 800-unit shares each. The deal was attractive as they only had to pay a monthly repayment sum of RM50, interest-free, for a period of five years (New Sabah Times, 2012). With indebtedness comes dependency and the sealing of a perfect patron–client relationship between FELDA (UMNO’s proxy) and the settlers-cum-voters. In sum, the features of FELDA seats that distinguish them from the traditional rural village or enclave are: 1. FELDA schemes are not organic villages but planned, constructed and tightly managed by FELDA agency. 2. FELDA schemes are run by the federal government through its agency FELDA, which has evolved from a land management office to a publiclisted global corporation. Land ownership and control over crop planting and management are not in the hands of settlers, making the latter totally beholden to the patronage of the central government which is presently under the control of UMNO. 3. The pioneer settlers were migrants who had come from various other parts of the Peninsula, hence do not necessarily have locally based kin ties. 4. The day-to-day management and governance of the scheme is run on a hierarchical system, from the highest management over economic activities to social leadership over small groupings of households. 5. Most of these villages are remotely situated and not always near any urban conurbations, making them inaccessible to outsiders, particularly to party campaigners not from BN. 6. The relations between voters and their political patrons are enmeshed through the organisation and infrastructural characteristics of the land scheme in which these villages and their occupants are corporatised and captured as an economic as well as a socio-political entity.

ETHNICITY: BANE OR BOOST FOR ELECTORAL ADVANTAGE? In considering all of the above will Malaysia’s electoral outcome continue to be charted on the basis of ethnicity? Most likely so, but not necessarily

152

Coalitions in Collision

because people vote on the basis of ethnicity not out of choice, but rather on the basis of a pre-determined option, or a function of who will be slated to stand in the seat on the basis of its electoral demography or due to the structural captivity factor I elaborated earlier. Where there is a Malaymajority constituency, the BN candidate would be from UMNO; for PR, from PAS. Where there is a mixed-seat, with an almost equal mix between Malay and non-Malay voters, the candidate will be chosen from a BN partner party other than UMNO. For PR, these mixed-seats will most likely be contested by a PKR candidate. Given the restriction determined by these choices of candidates there will be a self-perpetuating and self-fulfilling truth claims that people vote according to their racial affiliation when in fact there are very few test cases in which voters can exercise their choice ‘across the grain’, or for the ‘best’ candidate or the best party, regardless of race. This could only be tested through several hypothetical scenarios: 1. A Malay-majority seat is contested by a Malay candidate from DAP and a non-Malay candidate from BN. 2. A Malay-majority seat contested by a non-Malay candidate from PR against a Malay candidate from BN. 3. A Chinese-majority seat is contested by a Malay candidate from DAP and a Chinese candidate from BN. 4. A mixed-seat (with no one ethnic group forming 50 per cent or more of the distribution) is contested by a Malay candidate from DAP and a Chinese candidate from BN. 5. A mixed-seat is contested by a Malay candidate from PAS and a nonMalay candidate from BN. Only the last two scenarios have been tested. In GE13 scenario 5 materialised in the Kota Raja Parliamentary mixed seat (P111) in Selangor which saw a contest between four candidates. This constituency was made up of 44 per cent Malays, 29 per cent Indians and 25 per cent Chinese voters. The main contenders for the seat were Dr Siti Mariah from PAS and Murugesan Sinandavar from MIC, aside from two independent candidates. Dr Siti Mariah won with a 29,395-vote margin. The Scenario 4 test case was the May 2014 by-election for the Teluk Intan Parliamentary constituency (P76). DAP fielded 27-year old Dyana Sofya Daud against Mah Siew Keong,



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president of Gerakan. In this case DAP had taken its greatest risk, in trying to buck the trend against ethnic voting. In the case of the Kota Raja constituency, non-Malay voters seemed to have exercised a protest vote against BN, to the extent that the party (being Islamic) and the candidate (being Malay) were not obstacles to nonMalays voting for the candidate. In the Teluk Intan by-election, Chinese voters swung a large percentage of support to the Chinese candidate from BN rather than continue to vote for the Malay candidate from the Chinese-associated DAP. In both cases there is also the urban–rural factor to consider; Kota Raja is an urban seat while Teluk Intan is a semi-rural seat. It seems that the ethnicity factor was not necessarily attached to the candidate, but rather how the candidate’s ethnicity was related to the party. For BN, fielding a non-Malay candidate in Teluk Intan did not deter Malay voters from giving their vote to him as they had done so in the past. On the other hand, a Malay fielded under DAP was not accepted by large numbers on both sides – for the Malay voters, the ‘Chinese’ party DAP still called the shots. Many rural Malays would only vote for the party (Gerakan) whom they associate with UMNO within the BN coalition. On the other hand, the DAP lost considerable support by fielding a Malay candidate. These above two test cases showed that ethnicity continues to play a part in defining Malaysia’s election landscape. However, the mechanism through which the ethnic factor worked was also mediated by other elements such as the level of urbanisation of the constituency, the average age of voters and also the strength of candidates’ appeal among local voters (on the Teluk Intan case see Aw (2014) and Ong (2014)).6

CONCLUSION: ELECTIONS AND THE PERSISTENT MALAY VOTE BANK Based on the above depictions, I posit that it is more accurate to identify Malay-majority Parliamentary seats as reflecting three streams of voters – the urbanites, the traditional villagers and the settler-cultivators. It is also likely that these constituencies are gerrymandered, with proportionately higher rural seats, including FELDA ones, to give more advantage to UMNO and BN (Ostwald, 2014). Voters in FELDA constituencies are what I would call corporatised villagers, whose economic livelihoods are linked with the now globalised and publicly listed corporate entity, FELDA Global Ventures

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(FGV). The latter stream of voters largely delivered UMNO’s votes, while the former two streams were almost equally divided in their support for PR and BN. The economic basis of Malay support for UMNO is patronage, while its socio-cultural corollary is usually attributed to Malay voters’ fear of a decline in Malay political supremacy. However, given the differentiation of voting patterns among Malays, it seems that urban-residing Malays are less economically dependent on UMNO’s patronage, and less believing that Malay political supremacy will decline were PR to assume state power. Therefore they were more inclined to vote for PR, especially if their dissatisfaction with present conditions was at a high level, leading to a heightening of their propensity for reform. The largest concentration of this kind of voter was in central Selangor and in urban conurbations around Kota Baru, Kuala Terengganu and Alor Setar. On the other hand, voters in traditional villages appeared to have stated their choice of party and candidate along traditional and historical lines of preference (swinging between either PAS or UMNO); these areas are the ‘Malay heartland’ of rural Kedah and Kelantan. But outside of these seats, the most significant sub-set of Malay voters is those registered in FELDA constituencies throughout the Peninsula. In GE13, the combination of PKR and PAS as the two parties most likely to serve the interests of Malay voters was insufficient to dislodge the unmistakable brand which UMNO carried as ‘champion of the Malays’. But as has been shown in this chapter, the cultural strength of UMNO with its formidable Malay vote bank was crucially backed by a strong requisite in the form of the FELDA factor. The latter represented UMNO’s infrastructural advantage to mobilise, manufacture and capture the consent of the Malay settler-cum-voter. The dependency–patronage relations between UMNO and FELDA voters played the biggest role in sustaining the Malay vote bank. The transformation of FELDA from a land scheme for landless peasants to an agricultural cooperative to commercial plantation to global corporation quite perfectly encapsulates the notion of a vote bank, bound by loyalty, dependency and indebtedness, to a patron, in more ways than one.



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References Aisehman (2013) ‘GE13: It is anyone’s guess this time round’, The Star Online, 4 May, http://elections.thestar.com.my/story.aspx?file=/2013/5/4/GE13/13048597#. U4p_zC_B8fN (accessed 1 June 2014). Aw, Nigel (2014) ‘Delving into DAP’s Shock Defeat’, Malaysiakini, 31 May, (accessed 1 June 2014). Bailey, F.G. (1963) Politics and Social Change, Orissa in 1959, London, Bombay: Oxford University Press. Case, William (2013) ‘Post-GE13: Any Closer to Ethnic Harmony and Democratic Change?’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 102(6): 511–19. Chan, Mae (2013) ‘GE13: Survey shows only 1% gap between BN and Pakatan’, fz.com, 3 May