AUGUST 14 — Parti Wawasan Negara president Hamzah Zainudin argues that Malay unity is the anchor of national stability. 

His proposition deserves scrutiny because the opposite may increasingly be true: a forced Malay-Muslim electoral consolidation involving Barisan Nasional (BN), Perikatan Nasional (PN) and PAS could produce instability before an election, paralysis after it, and ultimately a deeper political balkanisation between different parts of Peninsular Malaysia and the two Borneo states.

The issue is not Malay unity itself. Malays have every right to seek political, economic and social solidarity. 

But the more fundamental question is this: can multiethnic Malaysia ever be stabilised by the unity of a single ethnic group, even if such unity were fully achievable? The answer is clearly no. A multiethnic national compact cannot rest on the consolidation of one community alone. 

It must rest on a principle that transcends ethnicity altogether. In Malaysia’s case, that principle can only be an inclusive, constitutional Islam — one that is lived as a shared civic ethic rather than an exclusivist political identity. 

Only such an inclusive framework can bind Malays, Chinese, Indians, Kadazan-Dusun, Iban and others into a single national imagination.

The problem, therefore, is not unity per se, but what is currently being presented as “unity”: an improvised electoral arrangement among organisations with different constitutions, competing leaderships and unresolved disputes over who actually possesses authority within PN.

That is not necessarily unity. It may merely be an electoral truce designed to harvest — or, more harshly, ransack — the Malay vote under Malaysia’s first-past-the-post system. The distinction is crucial.

First-past-the-post rewards concentrated electoral coordination. If two or three parties appealing substantially to the same Malay electorate avoid contesting against one another, their combined votes can produce disproportionately large seat gains.

The recent Negeri Sembilan experience demonstrated the potency of this strategy. 

Analysis after the election showed previously narrow BN victories becoming much larger when BN and PN avoided splitting their respective electoral bases. 

But numbers alone are not constitutional legitimacy, political compatibility or governmental stability.

This is where Hamzah’s argument encounters its central contradiction.

A coalition assembled principally to maximise Malay votes under first-past-the-post may be extremely effective at winning seats while remaining structurally incapable of governing coherently.

Indeed, the warning signs already exist.

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang has maintained that Bersatu effectively removed itself from PN by attempting to create another coalition.

Yet PN chairman Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar subsequently maintained that Bersatu remained a PN component. That contradiction goes directly to the question of who possesses authority to interpret PN’s own constitutional arrangements.

Bersatu has since argued that excluding it from Melaka seat negotiations would violate PN’s constitution because it remains a coalition member entitled to participate.

This is not a trivial disagreement.

It means that before the next major electoral arrangement is even concluded, the parties involved are disputing who belongs to the coalition, who can negotiate seats and who possesses the authority to determine membership.

Thus, the supposed Malay-Muslim unity contains the seeds of internecine conflict within itself.

Any claim that the BN-PN-PAS arrangement itself is legally invalid should be made cautiously unless and until a competent court or the relevant regulatory authorities determine that question. 

But its internal constitutional legitimacy can certainly be questioned when a constituent party itself alleges that the coalition’s constitution is being violated. That distinction matters.

The political danger is therefore not merely hypothetical illegality. It is institutional ambiguity.

And institutional ambiguity combined with first-past-the-post electoral engineering can become exceptionally dangerous.

Consider what happens before an election.

Who decides which party contests which seat? If PAS negotiates with BN, where does that leave Bersatu if Bersatu remains legally and constitutionally within PN? Can PN make electoral commitments that bind all its components when one component contests the authority under which those commitments were made?

What happens if rival candidates appear?

What happens if competing interpretations of coalition constitutions are taken to court?

What happens if disputes reach the Registrar of Societies?

An electoral machine supposedly created to prevent three-cornered contests could itself generate legal and political contests over who possesses the right to represent that machine.

The deeper danger appears after an election.

Imagine that the arrangement succeeds spectacularly. BN, PAS, PN and associated partners obtain sufficient seats to form governments at state or federal level.

Who then governs?

A first-past-the-post electoral pact can decide who does not contest a constituency. 

It cannot automatically decide who becomes prime minister, deputy prime minister, menteri besar, cabinet minister or speaker.

Nor can it resolve fundamental disagreements about economic policy, federalism, Islamic administration, education, appointments, corruption, Sabah and Sarawak, or the distribution of federal resources.

An electoral ceasefire is not a governing programme.

This is why Hamzah’s proposition that Malay unity produces stability has to be reversed.

Forced Malay-Muslim unity can actually manufacture instability by suppressing disagreements during elections only for those disagreements to explode after power has been won.

PAS wants influence commensurate with its electoral strength. BN has its own institutional history and leadership interests. 

Bersatu has no obvious reason to surrender its rights quietly if it believes it is being displaced from a coalition it still legally belongs to. Wawasan seeks to become the bridge between competing political centres.

But bridges work only when both banks remain stationary. These banks are moving.

The potential consequence is internecine lawfare: injunctions, constitutional challenges, disputes over coalition decisions, competing claims to political legitimacy and potentially battles over elected representatives and governments.

Malaysia could therefore move from electoral engineering into institutional paralysis.

That would be extraordinarily dangerous in a first-past-the-post system because the same mechanism that exaggerates electoral victory can disguise political fragility.

A coalition might win an impressive parliamentary majority without possessing an equally impressive degree of internal cohesion.

The seats would look stable. The government underneath them might not be.

This is where the argument intersects with the larger danger of balkanisation.

If Malay-Muslim unity increasingly becomes the organising doctrine of Peninsular politics, other Malaysians will logically begin organising themselves defensively.

Political consolidation produces counter-consolidation.

When Malays are repeatedly instructed to vote as Malays and Muslims, Chinese and Indians may increasingly perceive politics through their own communal security. Urban Malaysia can become politically estranged from rural Malaysia. 

Northern and east-coast states can harden around one ideological configuration while the west-coast metropolitan belt develops another.

Malaysia would remain territorially intact while becoming psychologically partitioned.

That is political balkanisation.

The consequences for Sabah and Sarawak are even more serious.

The two Borneo states cannot simply be incorporated into a political doctrine created by the competitive dynamics of Peninsular Malay politics.

Sabah and Sarawak contain distinctive ethnic, religious and political configurations. 

Their relationship with the Federation is also inseparable from the historical architecture surrounding the formation of Malaysia in 1963 and the continuing political significance of MA63.

If federal power becomes increasingly defined by which coalition can assemble the largest Malay-Muslim electoral bloc in the Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak have powerful incentives to strengthen their own regional political consolidation.

Peninsular consolidation can therefore generate Borneo consolidation.

The stronger the politics of Malay-Muslim exclusivity becomes in the Peninsula, the stronger the political attraction of Sarawakian and Sabahan autonomy may become across the South China Sea.

That does not automatically mean separatism.

Balkanisation begins much earlier than separation.

It begins when different parts of the same federation cease believing they inhabit the same political imagination.

Kuching begins thinking principally as Kuching rather than Kuala Lumpur.

Kota Kinabalu becomes increasingly suspicious of political formulas manufactured in the Peninsula.

Peninsular parties begin seeing Borneo primarily as the parliamentary numbers necessary to manufacture a federal majority.

Sabah and Sarawak, conversely, begin seeing Peninsular coalitions as competitors from whom greater autonomy must continuously be extracted.

That is centrifugal federalism which Malaysia cannot afford.

Hamzah is therefore correct that Malay political confidence is indispensable to national stability. But confidence should never be confused with enforced political uniformity.

A further question must also be asked more directly: who is the figure capable of uniting all Malays? 

And more importantly, what is the substantive content of that proposed Malay unity? If it is merely electoral coordination or elite bargaining, then it is fragile and temporary. 

If it is grounded in a deeper civic ethic, then it must be articulated clearly to the nation rather than invoked as a slogan. 

Hamzah and others who advance this idea must therefore present not only the call for unity, but its constitutional, ethical and policy content.

Genuine Malay unity allows Malays to disagree.

It permits UMNO Malays, PAS Malays, Bersatu Malays, PKR Malays, Amanah Malays and politically unaffiliated Malays to hold different opinions without treating one another as racial or religious defectors.

A strong Malay community does not require every Malay ballot to travel in the same direction.

Nor does a strong Malaysia require an electoral arrangement whose primary achievement is preventing Malay votes from being divided.

The true test of national stability is what happens the morning after the election.

Can the winners govern together? Can their coalition constitutions withstand scrutiny?

Can disputes be settled without litigation?

Indeed, can political leaders accept institutional restraints?

Can Sabah and Sarawak remain confident that Malaysia belongs equally to them?

Can Chinese and Indians believe that Malay political cooperation is intended to govern with them rather than over them?

Those are the tests that matter.

Malaysia should therefore be extremely cautious about celebrating an improvised BN-PN-PAS electoral arrangement as evidence of Malay unity.

It may indeed be extraordinarily efficient at consolidating votes under first-past-the-post.

But efficiency in winning elections and capacity for governing are completely different things.

If the arrangement rests upon contested coalition authority, unresolved Bersatu claims, competing leadership ambitions and an increasingly exclusivist conception of Malay-Muslim politics, Malaysia could eventually discover that it has engineered a formidable electoral machine incapable of producing a coherent government. That is the ultimate danger.

An alliance created to prevent Malay votes from splitting could split the institutions of government instead.

A project advertised as Malay unity could intensify divisions among Malays themselves. 

Who is the person to unite all the motley collection of Malay groups when Bersatu, even MUDA, are against Hadi-led PAS to work with BN, let alone to place PN and BN, who disagree more often than they agree, together!

A strategy intended to stabilise Peninsular politics could therefore encourage Sabah and Sarawak to retreat further into regional political fortresses.

And an electoral formula designed to capture government could leave Malaysia trapped between lawfare, coalition warfare and governmental paralysis.

That is not national stability.

It is an invitation to balkanisation.

Malaysia needs Malay strength, but not forced Malay-Muslim uniformity; electoral cooperation, but not constitutional improvisation. 

Indeed, strong governments, but not majorities assembled from incompatible political components. Invariably, what is the nation-building content of the Malay Unity?

Above all, Malaysia needs a federal political compact capable of surviving the day after an election where nation-building, coupled with a strong economic agenda, to ensure the role of Malaysia as a trading country and regional hub in Asean must always be present.

Because winning Malaysia through first-past-the-post arithmetic is one thing.

Keeping Malaysia governable, constitutional and whole is quite another, especially when Malaysia regional, even, global pre-eminence is compromised.

* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and a director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.