Malaysia political crisis

[jaichind]

First counter-defection away from the Muhyiddin bloc.  A PPBM (Muhyiddin faction) MP and deputy works minister, resigns from the government and goes over to the PPBM (Mathahir faction)

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/malaysia-politics-deputy-works-minister-resigns-bersatu-12804504

So now PPBM (Muhyiddin faction) has 31 MPs from 32 while PPBM (Mathahir faction) has 6 MPs instead of 5 MPs.  The government majority falls from 113-109 to 112-110 and its majority falls to 1.

[Joseph Cao]

http://freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2020/06/05/pkr-veep-from-sarawak-quits-party-pledges-loyalty-to-muhyiddin-gps/

And the counter-defection is immediately cancelled out by a Sarawak PKR MP who defected to PN, ostensibly so that his constituency can continue receiving aid from the federal government. Because of its historical reliance on federal aid, the Sarawak political scene is very machine-oriented and dominated by a few former UMNO bigwigs (most notably the PPBM-aligned and famously corrupt former Chief Minister Taib Mahmud), who famously led all of Sarawak's Barisan MPs away from the coalition to form a new party known as GPS (which nevertheless caucused with BN in Parliament). Now, of course, GPS has returned to Muhyiddin's side and their political gravity in the state remains strong. While the defecting MP is nominally registering as an independent, I fully expect him and the several other "independent" Muhyiddin-aligned MPs to formally register with Perikatan Nasional soon – such candidates in Sarawak have historically been quick to move to a party, the most recent cases being this MP himself as well as the then Pakatan-aligned (and now state party chief) Larry Sng, both of whom won in 2018 as independents with Pakatan's backing, then formally registered with the party the morning after the election.

[jaichind]

http://freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2020/06/05/pkr-veep-from-sarawak-quits-party-pledges-loyalty-to-muhyiddin-gps/

And the counter-defection is immediately cancelled out by a Sarawak PKR MP who defected to PN, ostensibly so that his constituency can continue receiving aid from the federal government. Because of its historical reliance on federal aid, the Sarawak political scene is very machine-oriented and dominated by a few former UMNO bigwigs (most notably the PPBM-aligned and famously corrupt former Chief Minister Taib Mahmud), who famously led all of Sarawak's Barisan MPs away from the coalition to form a new party known as GPS (which nevertheless caucused with BN in Parliament). Now, of course, GPS has returned to Muhyiddin's side and their political gravity in the state remains strong. While the defecting MP is nominally registering as an independent, I fully expect him and the several other "independent" Muhyiddin-aligned MPs to formally register with Perikatan Nasional soon – such candidates in Sarawak have historically been quick to move to a party, the most recent cases being this MP himself as well as the then Pakatan-aligned (and now state party chief) Larry Sng, both of whom won in 2018 as independents with Pakatan's backing, then formally registered with the party the morning after the election.

While Larry Sng who is the son of a BN rebel and founder of BN splinter SWP ran with PH support in 2018,  Jugah Muyang who just defected to PN, was a BN component party PRS rebel and won in a 3 way race beating out both BN and PH before joining PKR after the election.  Since he has a BN (now GPS) background I totally expect him now to join up with GPS.

[jaichind]

It seems PH is going to fall apart.  PH, PPBM (Mathahir faction), and WARISAN bloc had been meeting to come up with an consensus PM candidate and then make a push to recapture power.  In seems that PKR insist the PM candidate should be Anwar while DAP, AMANAH, WARISAN and PPBM (Mathahir faction) were for Mathahir with Anwar as DPM who will then take over half a year later. 

According to DAP and AMANAH sources they gave PKR some time to get the Sarawak based GPS to back Anwar as PM in which case they will switch their support over to Anwar.  It seems PKR missed the deadline so DAP and  AMANAH are insisting that PKR back Mathahir so he can rope in GPS in support a PH goverment.  Due to the compulsion of electoral politics this was unlikely to take place one way or another.  Anyhow PKR came out with "It has to be Anwar or the highway" position and seems to be threatening to leave PH over this issue.

If so this sounds like a great time for a snap election where even if the UNMO-PAS alliance does not hold across the board UNMO will sweep back to power with a massive majority.  The Malaysia 2018-2020 experience really looks like the 1977-1979 India experience with a coalition of the opposition forces plus splinters from a long time ruling party finally defeats a dominate ruling party only to bicker and splinter in power leading to the fall of the government followed by a landslide defeat to the former dominate ruling party.

[jaichind]

The latest Mathahir maneuver given the deadlock between him and Anwar is to have WARISAN leader Shafie Apdal  as the PH PM candidate with Anwar and Mathahir's son Mukhriz as DPM.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2020/06/27/shafie-apdal-being-pushed-as-pakatan039s-pm-choice

Clearly this both a move to diminish Anwar but also make an argument that  Shafie Apdal could potentially pull in GPS to back a PH government out of Borneo solidarity against Peninsular Malaysia domination of Malaysia politics since the foundation of the Malaysia federation.   I doubt this will work but I guess if there is any chance of getting GPS to defect this is that way.  It is also a way to pull in votes for PH in Borneo when the midterm election does come.

DAP and AMANAH are all onboard for this with Anwar and PKR trying to figure out how to counter this idea without being viewed as Anwar for PM or nothing.

[Joseph Cao]

…Okay. Haven't commented on this for the past few weeks because of how massive this fecal festival has been, but here goes.

If you don't look too closely, you could maybe view Shafie as a compromise candidate between Mahathir and Anwar since picking either of these would alienate the other side and perhaps irrevocably split PH. But the rationale Mahathir has given makes this a very obvious poisoned chalice. Shafie is a capable Chief Minister and leader of Sabah, but there is absolutely no chance that this convinces GPS to support PH+; its leaders (most notably James Masing, the deputy CM of Sarawak) have made abundantly clear in public statements that they will not cross over to support Pakatan. GPS, as mentioned previously, has a long history of corruption that has continued even after splitting off from Barisan Nasional two years ago. They chose not to support the PH government for a reason. Shafie adds basically nothing of strategic value to the ticket, certainly nothing along the lines of what Mahathir and his backers are claiming.

More significantly, Mahathir's proposal to put forward two Deputy PMs sets up an extremely forseeable clash between Anwar and Mukhriz Mahathir (Mahathir's son and recently deposed Chief Minister of Kedah) for the PM post in the very unlikely event that this hypothetical ticket actually manages to win. Demoting Anwar and raising Mukhriz's profile in this manner is Mahathir's first concrete indication that he has national ambitions for his son, perhaps to fulfil the role of "carrying Mahathir's legacy" that apparently nobody else in Malaysian politics could take up and which has wrecked the careers of many, many politicians (including two Prime Ministers and four deputy Prime Ministers) who did not perform to Mahathir's satisfaction. As it is, it further confirms the general consensus that Mahathir is now a rogue agent politically.

In any case, this move does absolutely nothing to alleviate PKR's concerns about his support[?] of Anwar. It may even deepen the split, as PKR continues to be insulted by the Shafie proposal and DPM picks as well as DAP and AMANAH leadership's apparent willingness to follow Mahathir off the cliff no matter what he does. Anwar has been extremely snippy in recent statements, remarking on the "conspiring" going on without his input. For better or worse, PKR is already viewed as the "Anwar or nothing" party, though the party infighting generated by Azmin's departure is apparently continuing and may hurt PKR's effort to make its case.

And the midterm elections apply only to Sarawak state elections, where GPS is expected to coast no matter what happens next – it's unlikely that this will win Sarawak PKR or DAP any votes and may in fact cause them to lose ground due to infighting (the Sarawak branches, like their national counterparts, stand behind Anwar and Whoever Mahathir Recommends respectively).

[jaichind]

https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/malaysia-prime-minister-wins-test-of-support-ousts-house-speaker/

PM Muhyiddin wins another battle against Mahathir by ousting the AMANAH Speaker with one of his own.  The vote was very close 111-109 which sort of shows that neither side have moved the front much over the last month or so.

[jaichind]

https://www.kob.com/business-news/malaysia-court-sentences-ex-prime-minister-najib-razak-to-serve-up-to-12-years-in-jail-for-crimes-linked-to-1mdb-scandal/5808954/?cat=602

Former UMNO PM Najib Razak  found guilty of all charges in his corruption trial and sentenced to 12 years in jail.  He can still appeal but in the meantime he will lose his position as PM.  Obviously for Muhyiddin  this means losing one MP on his side but he will gain it back in the by-election.   In certain ways this is good news for Muhyiddin as Najib Razak is the only politician in UMNO that has broad Malay electoral appeal and can unite the UMNO base.  Now with Najib Razak out of the way UMNO might have no choice but back Muhyiddin as the leader and PM candidate of PN in a snap election that is sure to come within the year.

[Joseph Cao]

https://www.kob.com/business-news/malaysia-court-sentences-ex-prime-minister-najib-razak-to-serve-up-to-12-years-in-jail-for-crimes-linked-to-1mdb-scandal/5808954/?cat=602

Former UMNO PM Najib Razak  found guilty of all charges in his corruption trial and sentenced to 12 years in jail.  He can still appeal but in the meantime he will lose his position as PM.  Obviously for Muhyiddin  this means losing one MP on his side but he will gain it back in the by-election.   In certain ways this is good news for Muhyiddin as Najib Razak is the only politician in UMNO that has broad Malay electoral appeal and can unite the UMNO base.  Now with Najib Razak out of the way UMNO might have no choice but back Muhyiddin as the leader and PM candidate of PN in a snap election that is sure to come within the year.

I would have written about the Najib verdict regardless, but I am not convinced this is the right place to discuss it because the electoral ramifications are minuscule at best. The politics of it is really the defining feature as far as the political crisis is concerned.

To be clear, while Najib has been sentenced to 12 years for one of the corruption trials he is involved in (this trial, the SRC International trial, is technically distinct from the more internationally notorious 1MDB case which is still pending a conclusion), he is still a member of Parliament and will remain so until he exhausts the appeal process for his verdict. As this could take up to a year according to the prosecution, he will not need to vacate his seat until that period of time is over at the earliest. He may be barred from contesting a federal election forthwith, but again that will not come into effect immediately. So the upshot is that he is constitutionally allowed to stay on as an MP for a while more, there will be no by-election in the offing, and Muhyiddin’s majority is safe for as long as Najib is able to waste the prosecution’s time in appealing.

The political angle is a bit murkier. Because of his position away from leadership and from Muhyiddin’s cabinet, it’s not clear how much of a threat Najib ever directly posed to Muhyiddin, though the danger was certainly present considering Najib’s uniquely intense grassroots support. In the event that a snap election is called while Najib continues to drag out the appeal process, the possibility still remains that UMNO would put him up as a challenger to the throne if it ever wanted to go rogue (though I don’t believe they will for reasons I’ve outlined previously). Even if Najib is safely locked away – at least from the electoral process, if not physically – I’m not convinced any of the parties’ positions have changed substantially following the verdict. There are people saying that this makes Muhyiddin look better with the electorate since he will be seen as respecting the rule of law, and they may be right up to a point. The higher-information portion of the electorate will not forget the previous commutations of certain other UMNO corruption cases. Inasmuch as this tends to overlap with the part of the electorate that was already anti-Perikatan and willing to buy into the “backdoor government narrative”, I don’t think the theatrics of this decision will move the needle too much.

Anyway, it seems to be the consensus on the ground that Najib will manage to lighten his sentence a little – in fact, he’s already done so by getting a stay of execution on his fine, which usually isn’t allowed. His appeal might even be successful. But d*mn it, we’ll enjoy the fact that as of now he’s facing multiple jail terms while we still can.

[jaichind]

Two big news which seems to be related to the aftershocks of Najib Razak being found guilty

1) Sabah WARISAN-PH government falls with large number of government MLA defecting to PN.  The driver for this is former UMNO CM Musa Aman was recently acquitted of  corruption charges and have been using the power of central government subsidies to buy back MLAs.  WARISAN CM Mohd Shafie Apdal has convinced the governor to call a snap election over Musa Aman's objections claiming that he can prove a majority of the MLAs.  With the WARISAN-PH vote share likely to still be significant some of the WARISAN-PH defector MLAs might defect back to get a WARISAN-PH ticket.

2) At the national level PN seems to be have dissolved.  UMNO has announced that it is not longer in the PN alliance led by PPBM PM Muhyiddin Yassin and that UMNO will continue to support Muhyiddin Yassin but not as a part of the PN alliance.  It seems UMNO will focus MN alliance which is its alliance with PAS.  UMNO' plan seems to be getting ready for a snap election where they will either kick out Muhyiddin Yassin's PPBM or allow them to join up as a marginal force.  Muhyiddin Yassin has indicated that he wants to have PPBM join MN in response as he knows PPBM running by itself in the next election will mean certain wipe out.

[Joseph Cao]

About UMNO. The key thing about Malaysian politics is that developments are always very fluid and never set in stone until things are confirmed by the relevant parties or actors. Much of the political scene runs on hearsay. With that said, no, PN has not been dissolved as yet, at least not according to a nice tidy scenario in which the entire UMNO party apparatus gathers to formally announce that it is backing out of the coalition. But Muhyiddin’s majority is so slim that just a couple of MPs unhappy with the Najib verdict – a sentiment that is evidently dominant among portions of the Malay grassroots – announcing that they no longer support Muhyiddin, would be more than enough to topple his government. So at this point, UMNO proper has to decide whether to use their upcoming “political decision” to affirm support or go rogue, but it may not be up to party leaders in the end.

(The troubling thing for UMNO long-term is that their grassroots’ reaction to the verdict gives every indication that the UMNO base is ready to follow Najib off a cliff, court decisions be damned, and contrasts unfavorably with Muhyiddin’s apparent strategy of trying to support the rule of law. It’s not a good sign for them if they make no attempt to course correct from becoming a Najib cult party. But that won’t affect too much in the here and now.)

If UMNO does decide to break away and topple the government, things get much more fluid. There is talk that Muhyiddin himself, in that scenario, may decide to return to his former partners in Pakatan Harapan to try and save his career. My personal opinion is that this is highly unlikely to happen because a) Harapan at the present juncture is more or less united around not acting as a vehicle for people who could defect to UMNO’s side again, as they have already been burned in this fashion by Muhyiddin himself, and b) Muhyiddin’s PPBM now includes former PKR member Azmin Ali, who controls about a dozen fellow PKR defectors and who will certainly object to the move, partly because he seems to actually want to work with UMNO and partly because returning to Pakatan would mean having to work with his nemesis Anwar Ibrahim again. So the players in this potential post-dissolution landscape could plausibly include:

- PKR+DAP+Amanah (the remains of Pakatan, who could yet split further over the ongoing debate over their prime ministerial candidate, which has been raging for weeks),
- Mahathir’s small faction of five or six Independent MPs,
- Muhyiddin’s supporters (the majority of PPBM),
- Azmin’s faction,
- the newly independent UMNO,
- PAS (which will have to make a decision as to whether or not to throw its support behind Muhyiddin),
- the Sarawak parties under the GPS coalition,
- an assortment of leftover MPs including the two MCA members who were formerly allied with UMNO, and
- the Sabah-based WARISAN.

In such a hypothetical scenario, all these players will scramble to form winning coalitions. But of course this is only hypothetical, and in the short term Muhyiddin will have an opportunity to test the fault lines when Parliament is required to vote on the national budget soon.

And about WARISAN: yes, their state government in Sabah has apparently-but-also-not-quite fallen. To be precise, the Sabah governor has accepted WARISAN leader and Chief Minister Shafie Apdal’s request to dissolve the assembly in preparation for snap polls, even as his opponent Musa Aman is attempting to make the case that he has enough assemblymen on his side to be sworn in as Chief Minister directly. Certainly there have apparently been enough assemblymen defecting to Musa’s camp to support his claim, but he has yet to provide enough concrete evidence in support of it. This is not related to the national drama around UMNO, as Musa has been attempting to topple Shafie’s government on and off over the past several months by bribing Shafie-aligned assemblymen and has only now apparently succeeded on his fourth or fifth try. There will now be snap state polls in the near future.

[jaichind]

It would seem to me that Sabah is so dependent on federal subsidies that if PH is not in power at the federal level, even if WARISAN-PH wins the Sabah assembly election defections of MLAs.  UMNO pulled this off back in 1994 after the 1994 assembly elections produced a PBS majority but was overturned when UMNO bought off various PBS factions to split out from PBS and join forces with UMNO to from the government.  I assume what Shafie Apdal is trying to do is to delay this and hope by the time WARISAN-PH wins the assembly election the national picture would have changed.

[jaichind]

https://www.therakyatpost.com/2020/08/12/dr-mahathir-unveils-his-new-party-name-in-a-poem-condemning-corruption/

Mahathir forms new party called Parti Pejuang Tanah Air (PPTA) which means Party of Homeland's Fighters.   In theory he plans to have this party separate from the PH alliance and will angle to be a kingmaker in the post midterm election world.  In practice unless PPTA forms an alliance with PH it will have no chance of winning any seats.

[Joseph Cao]

Oh dear.

Anwar has just held a press conference where he claims to have secured enough MPs “from multiple parties” to form a parliamentary majority, and that their changes of heart were based on“deep dissatisfaction with current leadership.” He secured an audience with the King to discuss these matters, at which the King could theoretically immediately depose Muhyiddin and place confidence in Anwar as Prime Minister, but it was postponed because our dear monarch is currently at the National Heart Institute for treatment. If the meeting is actually held, the government could very well fall again, this time in the other direction.

The speech and the subsequent back-and-forth with reporters have indicated a few things:
- This supposed “strong, convincing, formidable” majority is estimated by Anwar to be close to two-thirds of Parliament
- Along with the majority of Anwar’s alleged support coming from Malay-Muslim members, this clearly indicates that a substantial number of UMNO, PAS, and/or PPBM MPs have decided to defect to their onetime enemy
- Interestingly, Anwar’s two-thirds figure (he hasn’t given us an actual number because that’s a matter for the King to certify) does not include Mahathir’s five Pejuang MPs
- Regarding the MPs who previously defected from Pakatan to form the current government, Anwar claims he “didn’t see their names in the list”
- This hypothetical group would form a new coalition distinct from Pakatan, but apparently would do their best to live up to its principles – which (forgive the editorializing) will never happen if there really are UMNO and PAS MPs in it


Following the press conference, UMNO President Zahid Hamidi confirmed that an unknown number of his MPs have switched their support to Anwar, and also pointed out that UMNO/BN is technically not an official part of Muhyiddin’s governing coalition. Both PAS and the Sarawak-based GPS have denied that their MPs are part of this movement; GPS says it is “firmly” behind the current government, and PAS also reiterated its full support. On the Pakatan side, AMANAH has given Anwar its full support and DAP has also offered its support contingent on him actually being able to get a majority. PKR is oddly silent; there are unconfirmed rumors that its rank-and-file are unhappy with the move. The Palace just confirmed that Anwar has arranged to hold a meeting with the King once he recovers, so the ball is in their court.

[jaichind]

Anwar has a history of claiming defectors to come that will get him to a majority to make him PM.  He did this right after the 2008 election.  Of course these so called defectors never showed up.  Looks like he is up to his old tricks again.

[PSOL]

At this point it makes more sense to throw a snap election than go through several more government changes/collapses. Clearly the Malay political leadership are unable to reach a consensus bar a majority to overrule leading party personalities.

[jaichind]

At this point it makes more sense to throw a snap election than go through several more government changes/collapses. Clearly the Malay political leadership are unable to reach a consensus bar a majority to overrule leading party personalities.

We have to get past the Sabah mid-term election first.  That will help calibrate the relative strength of the ruling bloc and opposition as well as the relative strength within the ruling bloc (UMNO, PAS, PPBM) and will have a large impact on seat sharing talks between UMNO-PAS-PPBM.  If PPBM does not so well in the Sabah election this weekend UMNO-PAS might just cut PPBM out of seat sharing talks in the upcoming federal midterm elections which are certain to come soon.

[jaichind]

If I had to guess what is going on is

a) Anwar is trying to rattle the GPS (UMNO-PPBM-PBS) alliance in the upcoming Sabah assembly election and push marginal Sabah voters that are focused on federal subsidies to vote for  WARISAN-PH over the GPS alliance in the weekend election

b) It seems some UMNO MPs are playing along perhaps to grab a share of power but with tacit support from UMNO high command who want to use this to extra greater pound of flesh in power sharing at the federal level from Muhyiddin/PPBM.  The way UMNO figure it even if this blows up in their face what will most likely happen is a snap election where UMNO clearly will gain seats.

[jaichind]

Now would be a useful time list out the Malay MP list

BN
  UMNO       39 (38 elected in 2018, 1 by by-election) (Malay party)
  MCA           2 (1 elected in 2018, 1 by by-election) (Chinese party)
  MIC            1 (1 elected in 2018) (Indian party)
  PBRS          1 (1 elected in 2018) (Sabah Christian tribal)

PAS            18 (18 elected in 2018) (Malay Islamic party)

GPS (Sarawak ruling bloc)
 PBB          13 (13 elected in 2018) (Sarawak Muslim tribal)
 PRS           2 (2 elected in 2018) (Sarawak Christian tribal)
 SPDP         2 (2 elected in 2018) (Sarawak Christian tribal)
 SUPP         1 (1 elected in 2018) (Sarawak Chinese)
 GPS Ind     1 (PRS rebel elected in 2018 then joined PKR then defected to GPS)

PN
  PPBM       31 (6 elected in 2018, 10 PKR defectors (Azmin Ali faction), 15 UMNO defectors)
  PBS           1 (1 elected in 2018) (Sabah Christian tribal)
  STAR         1 (1 elected in 2018) (Sabah Christian tribal)

PH
  DAP         42 (42 elected in 2018) (Chinese)
  PKR         38 (36 elected in 2018, 2 independents that joined after 2018) (Multi-ethnic)
  AMANAH  11 (11 elected in 2018) (PAS moderate splinter)

WARISAN bloc (Sabah ruling bloc)
  WARISAN  9 (8 elected in 2018, 1 UMNO defector) (Sabah Malay)
  UPKO        1 (1 elected in 2018 as BN alliance then defected to WARISAN) (Sabah Christian tribal)

PSB            2  (2 defectors from PRS) (Sarawak Christian tribal) (pro-PH)

PEJUANG     5 (5 elected as PPBM, Mahathir faction) (pro-PH)

MUDA         1 (1 elected as PPBM, youth splinter from Mahathir faction) (pro-PH)

Right now the ruling bloc has BN PN and PAS which adds up to 113 vs 109 for the opposition.

For Anwar's claim to be true (2/3 majority) it will have to be the 91 from PH, 1 from MUDA, 10 from WARISAN bloc and 2 from PSB plus most if not all of UMNO.  Mahathir is against Anwar becoming PM so PEJUANG's 5 is out.

Anwar led PH-UMNO alliance will be truly farcical.  I suspect it will work on practice as DAP will most likely leave such an alliance to join up with  Mahathir.  Perhaps Anwar convinced most UMNO MPs to leave UMNO and join PKR ?  

[jaichind]

Past history of Anwar claiming a majority for him being PM which never showed up

Anwar: Pakatan Rakyat can take over Fed Govt by Sept 16 - 23 Apr 2008
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2008...govt-by-sept-16

Anwar says he has majority to rule - SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia...0080916?sp=true

Anwar says Pakatan Harapan has the numbers to form Malaysia's government - FEB 29, 2020
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/a...sias-government

Will this be the 4th ?

[jaichind]

It seems part of the defectors that Anwar is talking about seems to be GPS or the Sarawak ruling bloc.  If so most likely this is a GPS scare tactic to extract concessions from PPBM PM Muhyiddin.  GPS's main electoral competition in Sarawak is PKR-DAP.  It makes no sense for GPS bloc to form an alliance with PH.

[PSOL]

It seems part of the defectors that Anwar is talking about seems to be GPS or the Sarawak ruling bloc.  If so most likely this is a GPS scare tactic to extract concessions from PPBM PM Muhyiddin.  GPS's main electoral competition in Sarawak is PKR-DAP.  It makes no sense for GPS bloc to form an alliance with PH.

At some point you should stop seeing these pols as rational beings.

[Joseph Cao]

Over 36 hours since the announcement, everything remains in a holding pattern for the moment (with one exception, which I'll get to soon) so I'll take this opportunity to say that a snap election would be a very very bad idea. Malaysia is at present facing a fresh rise in COVID cases, largely coming out of Sabah, where the state polls are contributing to at least four active clusters containing the vast majority of cases in the country. Two politicians have already tested positive during the campaigning period, no doubt in addition to an unknown number of ordinary citizens. (Sabah is such a large, rural, and poorly connected state that physical campaigning is unavoidable.) Multiply that by the nationwide free-for-all a snap election would bring on and the country would most certainly be brought back to its knees by the resulting public health and economic crisis.

The seat-sharing talks which were going on some weeks ago are in preparation for the next federal election, which even at the time was expected to be called early; Malaysia doesn't have midterm elections. jaichind brings up some good points otherwise, as UMNO/PAS clearly wants to cut its losses in some way. Which brings us to the update from PAS: a senior leadership figure (the deputy chief minister of the PAS-run state of Kelantan – otherwise known as Malaysia's Alabama) had this to say:

"We remain with Muhyiddin – all of our 18 MPs. So far, the stand of PAS is that we support PN and we are with Muafakat Nasional … [If PN falls] that's another story."

Hilariously, this puts PAS in essentially the same position as their archnemesis DAP – will support Anwar/drop Muhyiddin, but only if Anwar gains the majority/Muhyiddin loses the majority.

There are more rumors flying around that the number of UMNO MPs who have switched allegiances is something like 10 to 15 MPs, certainly some way short of a mass exodus. GPS seems unlikely to switch and I heavily doubt they are the main actors here; the catalyst for all this action lies within UMNO. But GPS has no need to leave UMNO further – they technically already have, shortly after the last general election, to found their own Sarawak-based party away from the BN umbrella. In any case, the parliamentary arithmetic does not look at all promising for Anwar:

On Anwar's side: PKR, AMANAH, 10-15 UMNO defectors, MUDA (Syed Saddiq's youth party), possibly WARISAN
Will probably join Anwar contingent on him gaining the majority: DAP, PAS
Will not join Anwar: PPBM (both the Muhyiddin and Azmin factions), the rest of UMNO/BN
Who knows?: Pejuang (best-case scenario for Anwar is that they don't join his coalition but instead act as confidence-and-supply for his majority), GPS

Anwar's side is nowhere near the 112 MPs he needs. And this is already a very generous reckoning – GPS seems firmly on Muhyiddin's side for now, for example.

As much as Mahathir is being mocked now, he does have a point that a hypothetical Anwar-led coalition containing UMNO MPs who bolted with Zahid Hamidi's cooperation is very likely to be a poisoned one and could come in exchange for Zahid escaping some of the 80-odd criminal charges he's currently being slapped with. None of this looks good and the calls for a snap election are only getting louder.

[jaichind]

My guess what is going on

Muhyiddin's plan: Wants snap elections and is the only one to be able to call one but does not want one unless there is a rock solid UMNO-PAS-PPBM seat sharing agreement.   So his plan is PN does well in Sabah assembly elections this weekend which increases his hand to force UMNO-PAS to have a seat sharing alliance with Muhyiddin as the PM candidate and then call a snap election.

UMNO plan: Wants a snap election which UMNO-PAS will win but does not want Muhyiddin and PPBM in the alliance where they have to share power.  Problem is  only Muhyiddin can call an election. So if UMNO allows some of his MPs to "defect" to Anwar it will destroy Muhyiddin's majority and a PPBM out of power will completely collapse.  So for Muhyiddin to save himself he has to call elections even if there is no seat sharing agreement between UMNO-PAS and PPBM.

UMNO "15 defector plan": Try to get the most out current situation.  If defecting to Anwar means more power for them personally.  Great. Since their "defect" is tactically sanctioned by UMNO high command they even if Muhyiddin just then call a snap election they can still run on UMNO ticket and come back as a part of a UMNO-PAS majoruty.  Win-win situation 

Anwar plan:  Anwar is sort of the Hillary Clinton of Malaysian politics.  There were many situations where Anwar could have become PM but somehow lady luck always pass him by.  Getting these UMNO defector is his last chance to become PM so he is charging forward even though he knows it could be a UMNO trap.  The way he must be justifying it to his allies must be: this gambit could help the  WARISAN-PH alliance in the Sabah assembly election this weekend so please play along since coming back to power or stopping a Muhyiddin snap election that UMNO-PAS will sweep involves a Sabah assembly election victory.

It seems UMNO played this very well if what I think is going on is true.  What UMNO will achieve is to play Muhyiddin  and Anwar against each other to force a midterm election where it will be UMNO-PAS vs PPBM vs PH where most likely it will be a UMNO-PAS landslide especially when Anwar has shown himself to be a political opportunist by doing deals with the "corrupt" UMNO. 

[jaichind]

Mahathir  said he will not run in the next general election which means the death of PEJUANG  after the next election.