MALAYSIA: 13th General Election: An overview
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Executive Senior Research Fellow, Area Studies Center
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Malaysia held its 13th General Election (GE 13) on May 5, 2013. GE 13 comprised elections for Parliament and twelve State Legislative Assemblies. The voter turnout of 11.05 million voters, or almost 85 per cent of total registered voters, was the highest recorded in the country’s history.
1. Election Results: Parliament
Table 1 Malaysia, 13th General Election, 2013 Distribution of seats in Parliament between BN and PR
State or Federal Territory (FT) | BN | PR* | Total | ||||
DAP | PAS | PKR | PR total | ||||
1 | Perlis | 3 | 3 | ||||
2 | Kedah | 10 | 1 | 4 | 5 | 15 | |
3 | Kelantan | 5 | 9 | 9 | 14 | ||
4 | Terengganu | 4 | 4 | 4 | 8 | ||
5 | Pulau Pinang | 3 | 7 | 3 | 10 | 13 | |
6 | Perak | 12 | 7 | 2 | 3 | 12 | 24 |
7 | Pahang | 10 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 14 |
8 | Selangor | 5 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 17 | 22 |
9 | Kuala Lumpur (FT) | 2 | 5 | 4 | 9 | 11 | |
10 | Putrajaya (FT) | 1 | 1 | ||||
11 | Negeri Sembilan | 5 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 8 | |
12 | Melaka | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | |
13 | Johor | 21 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 26 | |
14 | Sabah | 22 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 25 | |
15 | Labuan (FT) | 1 | 1 | ||||
16 | Sarawak | 25 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 31 | |
Total |
133 | 38 | 21 | 30 | 89 | 222 |
Source: The Star ( StarSpecial, Full Results, 13th General Election 2013 ), 7 May 2013
2. Election Results: State Legislative Assembly
Table 2 Malaysia, 13th General Election, 2013 Distribution of State Legislative Assembly seats between BN and PR
State | BN | PR | Total | ||||
DAP | PAS | PKR | PR total | ||||
1 | Perlis | 13 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 15 | |
2 | Kedah | 21 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 15 | 36 |
3 | Kelantan | 12 | 32 | 1 | 33 | 45 | |
4 | Terengganu | 17 | 14 | 1 | 15 | 32 | |
5 | Pulau Pinang | 10 | 19 | 1 | 10 | 30 | 40 |
6 | Perak | 31 | 18 | 5 | 5 | 28 | 59 |
7 | Pahang | 30 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 12 | 42 |
8 | Selangor | 12 | 15 | 15 | 14 | 44 | 56 |
9 | Negeri Sembilan | 22 | 11 | 3 | 14 | 36 | |
10 | Melaka | 21 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 28 | |
11 | Johor | 38 | 13 | 4 | 1 | 18 | 56 |
12 | Sabah | 48 | 4 | 7 | 12* | 60 | |
Total |
275 | 95 | 85 | 49 | 230 | 505* |
Source: The Star ( StarSpecial, Full Results, 13th General Election 2013 ), 7 May 2013
3. Points of note
i. Margins of BN’s victory
The outcomes of GE 13 were closer than BN’s triumph suggested. At the national level, PR gained a significantly higher proportion of the popular vote than BN. In all Parliamentary contests, PR obtained 50.87 per cent of the popular vote compared to BN’s 47.38 per cent.
As in past elections, however, its domination of a gerrymandered first-past-the-post system gave BN a disproportionately high share of Parliamentary seats ( Table 3 ).
Table 3 Malaysia, General Elections 1959–2013 Popular Vote Compared with Parliamentary Seats
Election Year | Alliance/Barisan Nasional | All opposition parties | Total no. of seats contested | ||||
% of popular vote | No. of seats won | % of seats* | % of popular vote | No. of seats won | % of seats* | ||
1959 | 51.7 | 74 | 71 | 48.3 | 30 | 29 | 104 |
1964 | 58.5 | 89 | 86 | 41.5 | 15 | 14 | 104 |
1969 | 49.3 | 92 | 64 | 50.7 | 51 | 36 | 143 |
1974 | 60.7 | 135 | 88 | 39.3 | 19 | 12 | 154 |
1978 | 57.2 | 130 | 84 | 42.8 | 24 | 16 | 154 |
1982 | 60.5 | 132 | 86 | 39.5 | 22 | 14 | 154 |
1986 | 55.8 | 148 | 84 | 41.5 | 29 | 16 | 177 |
1990 | 53.4 | 127 | 71 | 46.6 | 53 | 29 | 180 |
1995 | 65.2 | 162 | 84 | 34.8 | 30 | 16 | 192 |
1999 | 56.5 | 148 | 77 | 43.5 | 45 | 23 | 193 |
2004 | 63.8 | 198 | 91 | 36.2 | 21** | 9 | 219** |
2008 | 51.4 | 140 | 63 | 48.6 | 82 | 37 | 222 |
2013 | 47.4 | 133 | 60 | 50.9 | 89 | 40 | 222 |
Sources: Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya (Election Commission), Election Report , various years; The Star ( StarSpecial, Full Results, 13th General Election 2013 ), 7 May 2013; Tommy Thomas, ‘BN is effectively a minority government’, Malaysiakini, May 10, 2013, www.malaysiakini.com/news/229692 (accessed May 10, 2013)
Moreover, although BN won nine out of the 12 state elections, BN only obtained 275 (or 54.5 per cent) out of a total of 505 State Legislative Assembly seats contested. While it only took control of three 12 states, PR gained 230 seats (or 45.5 per cent of the total).
Since the last general election of 2008, DAP, PAS and PKR have cohered as a coalition despite doubts about their ideological compatibilities, and severe pressure from the regime. The PR’s unity was most clearly shown when DAP was prepared to ‘borrow’ the party symbols of PAS and PKR after the Registrar of Societies (RoS) refused to recognize the DAP’s current leadership. The RoS’s stance, officially made two days before nomination day, made it risky for DAP candidates to register for nomination using their party’s own symbol. In the event, the RoS had to permit DAP to use its symbol but the DAP-PAS-PKR cooperation was widely supported.
In addition, for a variety of reasons, many more ‘independent’ candidates contested at Parliamentary and state levels than ever before. Yet, none of them was elected, leaving BN and PR the only victors in GE 13.
Thus, in PR’s operations and voters’ calculations, a ‘two-coalition system’ already existed.
The main opposition to the BN in GE 13 came from a populist multiethnic urban middle-class dissent against corruption, lack of transparency, weak governance, institutionalized ethnic discrimination and right-wing and bureaucratic religious (Islamic) chauvinism. This groundswell of dissent, that had arisen in 2007–2008 and was organized into various social movements supported by a broadening social media, bore PR to its unprecedented hopes of defeating BN and taking national power. Most of this socio-political development – grounded in the changed demographic and ethnic character of urban constituencies – emerged from four decades of structural economic transformation, the social engineering of the New Economic Policy and extensive urbanization.
GE 13 was the first election to which Najib Tun Razak led BN after succeeding Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as Prime Minister in 2009. The GE 13 result is already being seen as considerably short of a resounding personal mandate for Najib. Whether Najib, who had been dogged by allegations of complicity in various scandals in the past few years, will be able to fend off criticisms and a potential challenge to his leadership of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), BN’s dominant party will be clarified closer to UMNO’s party elections in October this year.