SINGAPORE – Malaysia’s Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob is facing renewed pressure to call an early general election from his rivals within the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its grassroots supporters after the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition it leads clinched an emphatic victory at the recent Johor state election.
Winning 40 out of 56 seats in the Johor state assembly, the results surpassed the BN’s own target of a two-thirds majority and follow an earlier landslide victory in Melaka’s bellwether state polls in November. But in an ironic twist, some analysts argue that the biggest winner of the March 12 Johor election wasn’t even a candidate.
Criminally convicted former prime minister Najib Razak has emerged as the BN’s star campaigner, attracting crowds on the election trail and winning plaudits from party leadership for his success as a vote-getter. The ex-premier emerged as the political face of the coalition’s resounding win in Johor, just as he did in Melaka five months ago.
Time is of the essence for Najib and his key ally, UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Both politicians face prison time on graft and money laundering charges and are agitating for snap polls to capitalize on the BN’s political momentum. Their ultimate aim, say analysts, is to get ahead of the courts by foisting a sympathetic member of their faction into the premiership.
Referred to as the “court cluster,” their clique hopes that early elections provide “greater control over the federal government – by bolstering UMNO’s seat count and the faction’s influence within the party – potentially resulting in corruption charges disappearing,” said Peter Mumford, a Southeast Asia analyst with the Eurasia Group consultancy.
Ismail now finds himself between a rock and hard place. Having come to power in August after the surprise resignation of his predecessor Muhyiddin Yassin, the premier is a relatively weak compromise figure who was elevated to the national leadership as a less-senior party vice president as a result of legal troubles hanging over UMNO’s hierarchy.
With his term running until August 2023, Ismail is in no rush to call a general election, especially before he has delivered on major accomplishments pertaining to economic recovery, analysts say. Consolidating his support within UMNO, to the point where Ismail can challenge Zahid’s hold over the party, is also a necessity for the accidental premier.
“It is no longer a question of whether Ismail intends to [challenge Zahid] – because he must. Otherwise, Ismail risks not being seen as an independent prime minister, given the influence of Najib and Zahid within UMNO, for whom the grassroots rely for political support,” said Hafidzi Razali, a senior analyst at political consultancy BowerGroupAsia.
UMNO’s scandal-tainted leadership would like federal polls to be held ahead of party elections that are expected to take place in November 2022. As party president, Zahid enjoys the ultimate say over fielding candidates to stand in the general election, putting him in a strong position to install loyalists and sideline those aligned with Ismail.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that the party leadership under Zahid would reappoint Ismail to the top job following a BN victory that allows UMNO to rule on its own without its current uneasy reliance on other smaller parties and coalitions. Ismail would thus likely prefer to hold elections in mid-to-late 2023, analysts say.
But rank and file sentiments, evidenced by celebratory chants of “dissolve parliament” from BN supporters following its victory in Johor, are becoming harder for the premier to ignore. “At this point, Ismail does not have a strong narrative to convince UMNO’s grassroots on why the general election should be held later,” said Hafidzi.
Observers expect Zahid to use this week’s UMNO general assembly meeting taking place between March 16-19 to pass leadership-sanctioned resolutions calling for a general election to take place this year. Such a motion could force Ismail’s hand or potentially put him at odds with the popular will of the party if he refuses to budge.
“A motion that is passed and approved at the general assembly will have to be followed by everyone in UMNO,” said Serina Abdul Rahman, a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “There will be lobbying, of course, but Ismail is not the highest-ranked within the party so he will have less clout than others in pushing forward his views.”
In his strongest statement yet on the matter, Ismail invoked the authority of Malaysia’s constitutional monarch, telling reporters on March 17 that UMNO should not be seen as usurping the powers of the king, who has the authority to determine when to dissolve the federal parliament and call elections.
The monarch is, however, constitutionally bound to act on the advice of the government, making any request for an early dissolution of parliament the government’s prerogative. Ismail added that any move to set a date for early polls would have to be discussed with the king beforehand and that there has been no official discussion to do so within UMNO.
During his UMNO assembly speech on March 18, Zahid offered a veiled response to Ismail’s remarks, stating that the dissolution of parliament would be decided by the cabinet and brought to the king for approval. He added that if the public mood is favorable towards UMNO, then a general election should be held immediately. “What are we waiting for?” he probed.
Ismail had earlier pushed back against broad calls for an early election immediately after the BN’s victory in Johor, saying snap polls were only favored by a “small group.” Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, who is aligned with the premier, similarly discouraged snap polls, citing lingering uncertainty around the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Ismail is less influential within UMNO than Zahid is, so will have little leverage to decide the timing of the UMNO elections. However, he does have more scope to influence the timing of national elections, and ideally, this would be after the UMNO polls,” said Francis Hutchinson of the Malaysia Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
While UMNO’s BN coalition is clearly on the political upswing after its devastating defeat at the 2018 election, a closer look at the Johor election results suggests its thumping victory was the result of divisions within the opposition rather than the strength of its own support, which grew only modestly above its dismal performance four years ago.
The BN coalition was also the clearest beneficiary of Malaysia’s first-past-the-post electoral system, managing to clinch 71% of state assembly seats with only 42.7% of the vote, while 56.9% voted for non-BN candidates. When the low voter turnout of 54.9% is factored in, the BN garnered support from only around 23% of the total state electorate.
Although Johor is widely seen as an UMNO stronghold given its historic role as the party’s birthplace, election data showed that the combined vote share of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition lead by ex-premier Muhyiddin and Pakatan Harapan (PH) opposition coalition actually exceeded that of the BN in 35 out of 56 seats.
Muhyiddin’s PN coalition, which lends support to the federal government despite being an electoral rival, largely caters to the same ethnic Malay demographic that has traditionally supported the BN. Despite winning only three seats, the PN coalition came in second place in 25 seats and increased its vote share across different ethnic communities.
The results were still a letdown for the former premier, whose 18-month tenure was marred by political turbulence and mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic. Muhyiddin, a Johor native who previously served as the state’s chief minister, said in a press conference after the contest that he was prepared to resign from his post in the coalition.
Worst still was the PH opposition’s performance, which saw its vote share decrease across the board in a dismal reversal of fortunes for the Anwar Ibrahim-helmed coalition that led a short-lived federal government for just 22 months. The opposition bloc secured only 12 seats, 16 fewer than its triumphant 2018 showing, with 26.4% of the total vote.
The defeat in Johor was the latest in a string of political setbacks for PH, whose campaign was fraught with disunity. Anwar’s Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) insisted on using its own logo on the hustings rather than that of the PH coalition it leads, ostensibly because its party symbol was well-received in 2018. But PKR ultimately won only one of the 20 seats it contested.
Another former premier, 96-year-old Mahathir Mohamad, had certain hopes of his Parti Pejuang Tanah Air (Pejuang) becoming a “third force” alternative to Malay-centric parties of the BN and PN. But none of the 42 candidates fielded by the party in Johor won a seat. Mahathir announced this month that he has no plans to stand as a candidate in the next general election.
Youth-based party Malaysian United Democratic Alliance (MUDA) made its political debut in the Johor polls and captured one of seven seats where it contested. Johor was the first election since a recent constitutional amendment that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, but the influx of first-time voters failed to benefit reformist parties as some anticipated.
On the campaign trail, the BN promised that it was the only party capable of returning Johor to economic stability. The nation’s southern-most state has been severely affected by the two-year Covid-19 pandemic, during which time its border with neighboring Singapore has been largely closed to the detriment of commuting workers and tourists.
Analysts say the results of state polls in Melaka and Johor demonstrate that ethnic Malay voters are returning to UMNO in search of political stability after the country witnessed an unprecedented three changes of government in the past four years – ironically due in large part to UMNO’s own efforts to destabilize federal and some state governments.
The BN has already been accused of breaking a key campaign promise only days after the Johor state election. During the campaign, the coalition pushed its affable chief minister Hasni Mohammad as its sole candidate to govern the state. But his nomination was derailed at the eleventh hour by what sources quoted in local media described as a “higher power.”
Faced with apparent resistance to his appointment from Johor’s influential royal family, Hasni – who is associated with a reform-minded faction of UMNO – issued a statement on March 15 asking the party leadership to appoint a “younger leader” as chief minister following a meeting with state monarch Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar and Zahid.
“This is an unexpected development for everyone, including BN who had Hasni running front and center in their campaign. The BN campaign manifesto for Johor squarely centered around him and his experience,” said Hutchinson. “It is very likely that the Johor palace has pressed for this change in leadership and it is unlikely that UMNO would have sought this.”
State assemblymen Onn Hafiz Ghazi was sworn in later that day. The 43-year-old is the great-grandson of UMNO founder Onn Jaafar and nephew of Senior Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. Hutchinson said the last-minute appointment reflected badly on the coalition and made UMNO “look weak and indecisive” vis-à-vis traditional rulers.
“If you look at Malaysia’s post-independence history, one key dynamic is the competition between the traditional rulers and UMNO to represent the interests of Malays. This move can be interpreted as one that weakens the power of the country’s elected representatives in the face of the monarchy,” Hutchinson added.
