The political process
The crowd awaiting election results at the Selangor Club padang, May 1958.
An orderly political process, in which the government mandate is decided by popular vote at both the national and state levels, has contributed to Malaysia's overall political development. Elections determine representation in Parliament, and the party with the majority of seats forms the government for up to five years. This makes political parties an institution for peaceful political change. Indeed, the manner in which political parties have thrived is a striking feature of the Malaysian political process. This is crucial to the spirit of democratic governance, and contrasts with some other post-colonial countries, which in the years following the achievement of independence were reduced to either military dictatorships or single party systems with little political competition.
The party system has endured due to three factors. First, its roots in the colonial past, where liberal-democratic ideas were infused into society. The British colonial administration exerted political control through a pluralistic framework—organizations were allowed to function, and sometimes even given support against traditional power bases. Second, the communist threat to the Alliance government following Malaya's Independence reinforced the ruling coalition's commitment to democracy, and hence the functioning of party politics. Third, a party system allowed for pluralism in a multi-racial society, enabling all races to be represented in government.
It has been the ability to coalesce competing ethnic demands by mediation between political parties that marks out Malaysia's political process as a success. At the heart of this success is the power-sharing formula forged through the Barisan Nasional (BN), and its precursor the Alliance, successful in all eleven general elections since 1957 and, looking back even further, in the Malaya-wide elections of 1955 and the municipal elections of 1952. The reality of this winning combination is that even though a multi-party system exists, there is in effect a ‘one-party dominant plus' party system.
Within the BN, it is the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)—the party that spearheaded the quest for independence—that remains central and primus inter pares. Yet it is UMNO's willingness and ability to share power with the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), Parti Bersatu Sabah, the Sarawak United People's Party and the other BN component parties that has ensured the coalition's continued ability to win control of Parliament and the various state assemblies.
Power-sharing among the multi-ethnic BN coalition is organized not after the fact of elections, but rather is agreed in advance by the nation's leaders (being heads of their respective ethnically-based parties). The success of this system, represented by the BN's repeated triumphs at the polls, demonstrates the effectiveness of the multi-ethnic coalition format in a plural society. The system has proved difficult for the disparate opposition parties to match, even if they have of late been able to attempt a similar coalition of forces.