Malaysia 2022 General Election Nov 19th

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I am on a business trip right now but will get going on figuring out the exact alliance terrain later this week when I get back.

Ok.
Enjoy your trip.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/malaysias-mahathir-97-run-general-elections-91320556

"Malaysia's Mahathir, 97, to run in general elections"

Mahathir who before said he would not run again will indeed run.  He will be running on the GTA alliance, including his PEJUANG party (pro-Mahathir PPBM splinter) and extreme Malay nationalist Ibrahim Ali's PUTRA, PAS right-wing splinter BERJASA, and  Indian Muslim IMAN.  It seems Mahathir this time want to outflank UMNO and PAS on the Malay nationalist and Islamism flank.  I doubt it will work.

Dr. M setting a new record for oldest candidate in a Malay general election. (I think)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/malaysia-najib-razak-jail-corruption-1mdb-umno-ge15-election-jail-prison-election-candidate-3005741

"Jailed former PM Najib among UMNO nominees for Pekan seat contest in upcoming election: Reports"

UMNO will either run Najib if he can get a royal pardon or run one of his children if he could not.

The Pekan chapter clarified yesterday that they submitted that list before Najib went to jail… which is odd in itself but not inconsistent with certain factions of UMNO prepping for an early GE from Johor elections onward. And none of his children are on the list. Maybe if Pekan UMNO submits a new list?

For the record Najib is completely disqualified from nomination or election as an MP, that took effect immediately based on Article 48(5) from the moment of conviction. Whether he gets a pardon only has effect on whether he can remain as an MP now, but we're here in this thread because parliament has been dissolved and that has become a moot point.

If I were UMNO I would not run any of  Najib's children.  The only campaign slogan that PH has left is "if BN wins then  Najib will be back out on the streets"

How politically interested are Najib's children? If BN did run one of them, which would be likeliest?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Is there any chance for MCA to claw back the ground it has lost?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Thanks for these write-ups. I'm going to through them all, but I'm pre-emetively recommending them in the meantime.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How much more poorly does BN do among young voters, overall?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Came across this headline online:
"MALAYSIA / 11 m ago
Bentong locals welcome development in district — if only promises made during GE15 campaigning are kept"
I LOLed a bit...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Saw this joke on the Malay internet:
Q: Busiest airport in Malaysia today?
A: Kuching

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at neighboring PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

Without saying too much about this specific case, my first question here would be, how many of those senior UMNO figures were women?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at neighboring PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

Without saying too much about this specific case, my first question here would be, how many of those senior UMNO figures were women?

You got me there, they're all male. Sexism played some role in this no doubt. But that said, I don't believe her marriage was even a top 10 issue among the voters in her constituency.

It certainly was not all-important, admist all the other things going on. It might have been a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation. But it does seem to have moved some voters. How many, I dunno...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH won in Georgetown by Stalin margins.
It seems they won over 80% there in most seats, and only one seat was remotely competitive.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

https://twitter.com/fmtoday/status/1594535766549372930
Well it's happening on a state-level at least. Malasiya realy does have something for weird political alliances that bring old enemies together.

Guess at this point the DAP is just happy to be in government again?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

https://twitter.com/fmtoday/status/1594535766549372930
Well it's happening on a state-level at least. Malasiya realy does have something for weird political alliances that bring old enemies together.

Guess at this point the DAP is just happy to be in government again?

If by "again" you mean "preserve the existing arrangement" then yes.

Ah. My brain was conflating Perak and the nation more generally. I was not aware of the situation re: Perak and UMNO bailing out PH...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Fair to say that at this point BN is probably trying to extract the highest price for its support?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nicknames I've found for Malay politicians online:
Rina Mohd Harun > Rina Doraemon (Her ministry released some posters that got social media criticism)
Najib Rajak > Bijan
Anwar Ibrahim > Numbers man (claims on his part he's got the numbers to form government)
Mahathir Muhammad > Tun M (Tun being a traditional Malay term of respect)
Muhyiddin Yassin > MooMoo (least sure about this one)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PN claims to have sent list of 112 MPs to the monarch. Since PH+BN = 112 then this list must include some BN MPs.   Note now the anti defection law is in effect. 

Also I would not rule out a split in GPS where the Christian tribal parties like PDP and PRS might bolt at the prospect of backing a PN government with heavy PAS influence without BN being in it to counterbalance PAS.   

It feels like things are narrowing down to either BN+PH(+Sarawak?) or BN+PN+Sarawak, with Zahid's sense of self-preservation making the former likelier.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/644735

"In Muar, Muhyiddin warns 'Jewish and Christian' agenda"

Muhyiddin says that the 'Jewish and Christian' agendas are behind PH.

The Jewish part is not a big deal since being against global Jewish power is a consensus across the Malaysian political spectrum.  Anwar also railed against Jewish power in the past and claimed in the past that Jewish power was behind BN going after him.  It is the Christian part that is causing a firestorm.  This could cost BN-PN votes in Sabah Christian tribal areas.  I guess Muhyiddin is doing this very late in the campaign to do a last-minute consolidation of conservative Malays in Peninsular Malaysia and hope that the news cycle moves slower in Sabah.

On the global level given the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it is clear that PRC-Russia prefers BN-PN while the collective West prefers PH which would be the same for the 2018 elections.  Muhyiddin campaigning against the collective West is too abstract so he is dumbing it down by saying that 'Jewish and Christian' agendas are behind PH.  

Could this end up helping cost Muhyiddin the top job? He needs Sarawak MPs if he wants government...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Found this on reddit, had to share. LOL.

(r/Rasora on Reddit)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looking at the breakdown of BN MPs per state and territory:

Johor 9
Sabah 7
Negeri Sembilan 5
Pahang 5
Perak 3
Kuala Lampur 1
Labuan 1

What is the least inconvenient/troublesome coalition option for a majority of BN MPs?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Looking at the breakdown of BN MPs per state and territory:

Johor 9
Sabah 7
Negeri Sembilan 5
Pahang 5
Perak 3
Kuala Lampur 1
Labuan 1

What is the least inconvenient/troublesome coalition option for a majority of BN MPs?

For the Peninsular Malaysia seats, I think they are split 50/50 in terms of which of PH or PN is the main enemy.  For Sabah clearly, BN MPs will lean toward PN since they own their seats to PN backing.  So from a re-elect game theory point of view if there was no anti-defection law PN would have won by now by getting 10-15 BN MPs to jump ship and that would be the end of it.  With the anti-defection law power now flows to UMNO Prez   Zahid although.  He now has to get a good enough deal from PH to sell to BN and UMNO leaders to back him in this move.

This kind of balance would help explain all the indecision from BN and the mixed signals we are seeing from the BN camp, taken together.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Break down of the race of the MP's between the political alliances. It does seem racial polarisation between alliances is going to become a permanent feature of Malasiayn politics

As far as I am concerned it was the Chinese that started it.  They shifted their votes from MCA to the more radical DAP in 2008 which in turn provoked a counter-consolidation with Malays toward more radical Malay parties.

Wow, the MCA lost more than half of their seats in 2008. While the MIC lost two-thirds, and UMNO lost one-fourths.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

As far as I am concerned it was the Chinese that started it.  They shifted their votes from MCA to the more radical DAP in 2008 which in turn provoked a counter-consolidation with Malays toward more radical Malay parties.

Wow, the MCA lost more than half of their seats in 2008. While the MIC lost two-thirds, and UMNO lost one-fourths.

The sequence of events is the following
a) Before and during the 2008 election PKR-PAS-DAP had an opposition alliance.  There was a surge in the Chinese vote for DAP in 2008 which pushed up the power of DAP within the opposition alliance much to the concern of PAS.
b) In 2013 the Chinese vote continued to shift toward DAP while UMNO was able to pivot this Chinese surge for DAP into accusing PAS of being DAP puppets and made a play for PAS Malay votes which worked and made up for the loss of  more Chinese votes for BN
c) After 2013 PAS decided to become more hardline on the Malay nationalism anti-DAP issue to prevent more losses of Malay votes of UMNO.  This created a split in PAS where the moderate faction of AMANAH broke off and continued its alliance with PKR-DAP while PAS broke off the opposition alliance to go after the Malay vote.
d) 2018 elections saw an unexpected shift of the conservative Malay vote from UMNO to the more radical PAS which was enough for BN to lose to PH due to PAS being the more radical party and the corruption issue.  Many Malay voters that voted against UMNO regretted their decision which led to DAP being in government.
e) This Malay pressure led PPBM to leave the PH alliance and form a grand alliance with BN and PAS to form a government that excludes DAP in 2020
f) In 2022 PN was the more radical of the Malay parties and was able to get a massive shift of Malay votes to completely outperform.

So everything starts with a).  The Chinese were thinking that bloc voting can produce a better outcome for them at the political level but over time merely created a counter-Malay consolidation with a strong chance of a radical Malay government. 

This is making me wonder how this could be de-polarized. How do you undo all of this?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is making me wonder how this could be de-polarized. How do you undo all of this?

For me, it would be to try to go back to the social contract of the 1970s and 1980s.  Namely that Malaysia is for Malays and the Chinese can have social and economic autonomy but must accept that the political and public norms should be set and dictated by the Malay majority.  The UMNO-MCA-MIC alliance is central to that social contract.  What the Chinese have done in Malaysia I find very distasteful.  It is what we Chinese call "宣賓奪主" or "The guest's voice gets louder than the owner." 
Hopefully seeing a radical PAS getting into the government can get them to see the error of their ways and adjust accordingly.
 
It does seem that Pandora's box has been opened it is hard to go back to what was there before.

Hopefully the amount of things that are said that cannot be unsaid is not too high. There's a good reason that a lot of the effort and attention from policymakers in the region is geared towards racial and ethnic harmony. This is a diverse region with influence from various neighboring areas and if the apple cart gets upset too much that can kill the golden goose and leave everyone worse off.