PAS gains prominence as Malaysian Malays reject corruption
The fundamentalist Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) emerged as one of the big winners in Malaysia’s general election, helped by a wave of Malay Muslim voters rejecting corruption and worried that their rights would be eroded under a non-Malay-dominated government.
A component of Perikatan Nasional (PN), PAS snatched 43 seats in Parliament, making it the largest single bloc of lawmakers.
Previous reports said PAS won 44 or 49 seats, but that would include wins by Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) candidates who contested in Kelantan and Terengganu under the banner of PAS.
Bersatu, which is headed by Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also PN leader, won a total of 30 seats.
Prior to the general election on Nov 19, PAS’ influence was mainly focused on the northern rural Malay heartland states of Terengganu, Kelantan, Perlis and Kedah.
At the election, PN won the majority of support of the Malay electorate in Peninsular Malaysia, at an estimated 54 percent of votes, according to Dr Bridget Welsh, honorary research associate of the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute Malaysia.
This was an increase from the 32 percent support garnered by PAS in 2018, when it won 18 seats in Parliament. However, PN did not secure any meaningful share of support from non-Malays.
“In effect, PN was a coalition only supported by Malays, with the exception of an estimated 5 percent of support from other communities, mostly (indigenous) Orang Asli,” she wrote in an article.
Both Pakatan Harapan (PH), which DAP is a part of, and the Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) lost a portion of their Malay votes in the election.
PH’s share of the Malay votes dropped from an estimated 25 percent in 2018 to around 11 percent in 2022.
BN saw a significant reduction of support among Malays, accounting for its major loss in seats, said Dr Welsh. BN won an estimated 33 percent of Malay support last week, down from 43 percent in 2018.
BN also lost an estimated 3 percentage points among Chinese (to 5 percent) and about 2 percentage points of Indian voters (to 16 percent).
Singapore Institute of International Affairs senior fellow Oh Ei Sun outlined two factors that contributed to the rise of PAS.
“First is that there is indeed a sizable number of Malays who rejected Umno, thanks to relentless portrayals by both PH and PN of Umno as being corrupt and scandalous,” he said.
“But this same cohort of Malays are equally uncomfortable with PH, which they perceive as liberal and multicultural. So they opted mainly for PAS and, to a lesser extent, Bersatu,” he said.
“Another factor is the sooner-than-expected culmination of a long process of Islamic radicalization effort by PAS, which has been running many tahfiz (religious) schools around the country, promoting its brand of Islamic supremacy in line with a trend of worldwide Islamic revivalism that has emerged since at least the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.”