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Malaysia
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Norshahril Saat

Opinion | Mahathir’s Pejuang lost the Slim by-election but it’s Muhyiddin’s Bersatu that’s feeling the heat

  • The 95-year-old’s new Pejuang party was trounced but it would be naive to think it competed against Barisan Nasional’s Umno to win
  • What the outcome showed was that Perikatan Nasional is in choppy waters, for Umno does not need Bersatu and its alliance with PAS is successful

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Why you can trust SCMP
Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin. Umno, now an unofficial ally of his ruling Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition, won a landslide in the Slim by-election. Photo: DPA
Norshahril Saat
As expected, Malaysia’s nationalist Umno party won the by-election for the state assembly seat of Slim in Perak over the weekend, with a resounding 84.5 per cent of votes, surpassing its 2018 election victory of 44.8 per cent.
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The by-election would not have changed the make-up of the Perak state government, given that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition – made up of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s Bersatu, the hardline PAS and unofficial Umno support – has 34 of 59 seats and the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) – made up of PKR, Amanah, and DAP – has 24 seats.

But the outcome has implications for the complex political realignments that are shifting and evolving six months after the PH alliance fell from power after an explosive political coup.

Last November’s Tanjung Piai by-election would be instructive for the PN government, as it clings on to power.

Then, PH suffered a massive defeat for the Johor parliament seat. Umno, already in alliance with Islamic party PAS through Muafakat Nasional (MN), portrayed the victory as a sign of Malays’ loss of confidence in PH.

This narrative later became a basis for the “Sheraton move” – named after the hotel where a deal to replace the ruling coalition was agreed upon – that upended Malaysian politics this February.

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Umno is now an unofficial ally of the ruling PN coalition made up of Bersatu and PAS.

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