Malaysia’s by-election win gives Anwar govt room to focus on policy and sway youth, Malays

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia’s ruling coalition Pakatan Harapan (PH) may have halted its rival Perikatan Nasional’s (PN) momentum by winning the recent

Kuala Kubu Baharu (KKB)

by-election, but it still needs to break the opposition’s hold on key vote banks to ensure triumph at the next national polls.

PN, which made persistent gains in a string of polls across 2023, received only 41 per cent of the vote at the May 11 by-election. Nonetheless, the voter statistics showed it cemented its stranglehold on two growing demographics, the young and the Malay majority, which are set to pay dividends in the future.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s multi-coalition “unity” government will thus need to use the breathing space it has earned to refocus on delivering on

key pledges and policies

sorely needed to loosen the opposition’s grip on these voters.

“The battleground is among the middle ground, especially the Malay middle ground which can be swayed by good leadership, good policies and good implementation,” said Selangor Democratic Action Party (DAP) treasurer Ong Kian Ming. His party’s candidate, Ms Pang Sock Tao, won the polls last weekend for a seat in the Selangor state legislative assembly.

“There is a lot of runway before GE16 for all parties and their leaders to make the necessary adjustments to win this middle ground as a pathway to Putrajaya,” said former deputy trade minister Ong, referring to the next national polls which are due by early 2028.

Ms Pang, who flew the flag for Datuk Seri Anwar’s PH, took a higher vote share of 57 per cent, compared with the coalition’s 54 per cent garnered in the 2023 state polls.

This was despite continued angst about high costs of living,

repeated episodes of discord

within the government, and concerns that democratic and economic reforms are stalling.

But this comfortable win disguises the fact that younger voters aged 40 and below favoured PN, with the opposition pact retaining the bulk of Malay Muslim votes. Selangor’s state-linked think-tank Institut Darul Ehsan (IDE) found that PN took more than 60 per cent of votes from those aged up to 40. 

However, this age group saw a low turnout of about 55 per cent, compared to the overall voter turnout of 61 per cent.

IDE senior research manager Khairul Arifin Mohd Munir attributed this to the fact that this was a low-stakes by-election that would not alter control of either the state or federal government, “causing young voters and those without relations left in KKB to be unenthused”.

But with the government taking less than a fifth of eligible voters aged below 41, he said there was a need for the ruling parties to “formulate strategies aimed at the youth”.

“In terms of policy, there is nothing attractive being offered to the youth,” said market research firm Ilham Centre’s executive director Hisomuddin Bakar.

Of course, KKB is just a single ward of 40,000 voters which comprise less than 0.2 per cent of an over 21 million-strong electorate nationwide.

But the youth and Malay voter trends have deepened in the past year, which saw PN make sweeping gains across the six states that went to the ballot in August and increase its vote share by double-digit percentage points in twin by-elections in Johor the following month, as well as in Pelangai, Pahang, on Oct 7.

Put these two factors together – old people eventually get replaced by the young on the electoral roll, while Malays make up not only the majority of Malaysians but also the fastest-growing portion of the population – and it will be a matter of time before PN takes power, unless the ruling alliance moves to turn the tide.

“PH needs to do more to assuage the fears of the Malay voters (and assure them) that it is capable of taking care of their economic interests and social well-being,” Dr Ong, who now heads Taylor’s University’s philosophy, politics and economics programme, told The Straits Times.

The Anwar administration has, in its 18 months in power, announced a slew of economic blueprints and reforms such as retargeting subsidies, reskilling workers and increasing wages but few of these have been fully implemented.

Meanwhile, government leaders, especially from Umno – the once-dominant Malay party which has been bleeding support since the 2022 general election – have trumpeted what IDE estimates to be a 3 percentage point gain in PH’s Malay vote share to 42 per cent. Malays make up just under half of KKB’s electorate.

But this ignores the fact that PN’s Malay vote share also edged up, by 1 percentage point to 56 per cent, according to IDE. Both PH and PN were able to increase their share of this demographic as the two independent candidates failed to make inroads like the Malaysian United Democratic Alliance did at the 2023 polls.

The Malay vote share figures include the largely Malay police and military, who vote a few days earlier than others. Of the 750-odd votes cast by this group, PH’s share increased from about 20 per cent in 2023 to nearly 80 per cent this time round.

Observers attributed the early voters’ swing to Mr Anwar’s Labour Day announcement mid-campaign that civil servants would be getting a pay hike of more than 13 per cent from December.

But polling day was another matter, with the opposition PN commanding, as it traditionally does, a swathe of the Malay votes. In fact, Dr Ong estimates that the ruling coalition got less than a fifth of the Malay votes cast on May 11 itself.

If PN can “present credible reforms and policies that can genuinely appeal to... those who are disillusioned with the lack of institutional reforms” under the Anwar administration, it could stand a real chance of winning power in the next election, he said.