Anwar's confidence vote,can he survive?...

What’s at stake for Malaysia in 

Anwar’s confidence vote, can he survive test?...

Anwar Ibrahim rose to the prime minister’s office after Malaysia’s inconclusive general election, but barely a month into his tenure he is poised to put his fragile authority on the line with a confidence test which seeks to cement his legitimacy to govern – and stifle the squabbling which ultimately undid his predecessors.

Monday’s vote is a political high-wire act, experts say, which challenges lawmakers to decisively back his administration and reset Malaysia’s fractious politics just as dark economic clouds gather. “There is a possibility the vote will not go his way,” said Aira Azhari, senior manager for research at the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) in Malaysia.

Expectations are that the vote will be a mere formality, as the leaders of five major coalitions and parties backing Anwar on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding to support his administration.

The new prime minister is said to have the backing of 148 out of 222 MPs with the pact. MPs from parties that signed the agreement who subsequently decide not to back Anwar will be obliged to resign their positions.

Failure on Monday, however, could sink his administration before it gets started, puncturing Anwar’s decades-long ambition to hold the top office. “However, he is setting a good precedent by agreeing to a confidence vote,” Aira added. “It is parliament’s role to lend legitimacy to the prime minister’s support, and it is time that parliament plays that role.” Still, it is an unconventional move for a sitting Malaysian prime minister and fraught with risk based on the results of the November 19 polls.

Anwar only patched together a majority of the 222-seat Dewan Rakyat, parliament’s powerful lower house, after days of backroom wrangling. His own Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliance brought 82 seats to the equation – a nose ahead of main rivals Perikatan Nasional (PN) – and enough to give the 75-year-old a pathway to the prime minister post. The narrow margin means Monday’s confidence vote is laden with jeopardy.

An early confidence vote is not entirely without precedent. Malaysia’s third prime minister, Hussein Onn, in 1976 called a confidence vote just days after taking office following the death of his predecessor. But Hussein stepped up at a time when the ruling coalition he took charge of held a clear parliamentary majority.

In November’s polls, no single party or coalition managed to win enough seats to automatically earn the right to form a government. Anwar’s self-declared majority of 148 seats, which just about met the threshold for a supermajority of two-thirds of the house, ultimately put him in the driving seat to form a government.

It took nearly a week before Malaysia’s constitutional monarch appointed Anwar as prime minister, with the understanding that he would form a “unity government” that pulled in the country’s other parties and coalitions. Yet almost immediately the Malay nationalist PN alliance, which is led by former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin and won just eight fewer seats than Anwar’s PH, declined to participate.

Instead, PN has sponsored a fresh round of recriminations, angrily questioning how Anwar managed to become prime minister. PN insists it presented the first proof to the king of a mandate to govern with 115 MPs on its side.

Muhyiddin has since accused PH of committing the “biggest electoral fraud ever” in cahoots with the former ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, whose 30 MPs decided to back Anwar after an initial split. The opposition has also raised doubts over Anwar’s anti-corruption credentials after he appointed the graft-tainted BN chief Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as one of his two deputies.

‘By rights he doesn’t need to do it’

Anwar’s decision to face a confidence vote – announced in his first news conference after taking his oath of office – has won public plaudits as a bold attempt to get beyond the infighting that has dogged Malaysian politics.

“By right he doesn’t need to do it,” read a comment by one Mohamad Izam in a thread of live tweets by a local broadcaster when Anwar announced his plan for a confidence vote. “The king already decided, that proves he has a majority. Yet he confidently accepts Muhyiddin’s challenge to call for a confidence vote.”

But the compliments do little to smother the very real risk that Anwar faces of seeing his administration being halted in its tracks prematurely. Each of the 222 lawmakers can vote independently and there is ultimately nothing to stop them from going against their party line.

Particular attention on Monday will turn to BN’s 30 MPs and the 23 from Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), the biggest coalition from Sarawak on Malaysian Borneo. Prior to the king’s decision, GPS had stated that it would go along with BN’s pick to form the government and that it was confident Muhyiddin and PN would find the numbers needed.

Muhyiddin’s list of 115 MPs had ostensibly included GPS and a significant minority of BN’s MPs, some of whom had openly rejected cooperating with Anwar.

On the flip side, MPs will also need to consider whether it is in the nation’s – and their own – interests to bring down Anwar’s government, especially with next year’s budget yet to be approved by parliament.

“It’s so close to the end of the financial year and the provisional budget will be tabled at the same meeting,” said Adib Zalkapli, Malaysia director for political risk consultancy BowerGroupAsia.

“If the confidence motion is defeated, the government can’t table the provisional budget. No MP wants to be blamed for the failure to approve next year’s budget.”

Also at stake would be the administration of the nation, especially given that a global recession is widely predicted to hit next year as developed countries the world over take drastic fiscal measures to rein in skyrocketing inflation. For more than two years, policymaking had largely taken a back seat as two successive governments grappled with a crisis of legitimacy following a 2020 political coup that brought down the PH administration after just 22 months in power.

Muhyiddin, who became prime minister in the aftermath of the coup, had been accused of using the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to shut down parliament via an emergency declaration, allowing his government to impose laws and policies without parliamentary oversight. He was forced to step down as prime minister in August last year after a rare rebuke by Malaysia’s king over a controversy tied to the Covid-19 emergency declaration.

But his successor, Ismail Sabri Yaakob of BN linchpin party Umno, did not fare much better.

He faced constant pressure from his party to dissolve parliament and pave the way for national polls in its bid to reclaim power that it lost in a watershed 2018 election. Ismail Sabri eventually caved in, dissolving parliament earlier in October.

“A loss [of parliament’s confidence] would in principle end [Anwar’s] premiership, with the government likely to revert to the regressive side of Malaysian politics,” said Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

Building an inclusive Malaysia

Beyond surviving the confidence vote, Anwar already has plenty on his plate.

Among his early pledges has been to steer Malaysia’s economy into calmer, more profitable waters and to address the rising cost of living as the treasury buckles under the weight of the nation’s hefty subsidy bill. But Malaysia’s deep social and racial divisions also stalk his tenure.

Last month’s election exposed a deep racial divide, especially in a noticeable shift among the Malay majority towards the more conservative posturing represented by PN. PN, which was formed just two years ago with the union between Muhyiddin’s Bersatu party and the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), rode a “green wave” – the party colour of PAS – as support surged for their brand of Malay nationalism.

“The opposition bench is dominated by Malay-Muslim MPs, so [Anwar] has a lot of work [to do] to get the community behind the government,” said BGA’s Adib. A significant part of PN’s election campaign played out on social media, where opponents allege Muhyiddin and his coalition peddled racially and religiously controversial messaging to steer voters into believing a PH government would erode Malay influence in politics and lessen their economic stake.

Authorities have since started investigations into several allegations of hate speech linked to PN’s online campaign. The swing in voting preferences, however, made it clear that PH has struggled to grow its appeal beyond its traditional base among the minority ethnic Chinese and ethnic Indian communities, plus some Malays living in urban centres.

Years of gerrymandering by BN when it was in power created a disproportionately higher number of rural seats – many of which were typically carved out of areas with a predominantly Malay population.

Analysts say that means Anwar and his administration will have their work cut out to build a convincing narrative of an inclusive Malaysia. “Anwar will need to present a strong vision of what Malaysia should be, and what it means to be Malaysian,” Aira from IDEAS said. “This is needed to counter the divisive racial and religious rhetoric that the opposition will potentially use against his government.” -  Joseph Sipalan & Hadi Azmi,scmp.

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