Malaysia

The Pakatan Harapan state government in Malaysia's economic powerhouse looks safe enough, but will Selangor's federal seats swing the opposition's way?

Barisan Nasional's Chinese component parties face a do-or-die contest this GE14. Selling themselves as conduits for investment from China isn't working.

Fracturing of Malay/Muslim parties has made it difficult to unite the Malay/Muslim electorate through ethnoreligious appeals.

No Malaysian election campaign is complete without these highlights of food, flags and swag, as the GE14 season enters its final days.

Street theatre and the wayang of politics merge one warm night in an urban battle about corruption big and small.

How much change, beyond Najib's ousting, does a Mahathir-led coalition represent? Or does an emboldened, victorious Najib mean political rebirths are redundant?

Malaysia's GE14 marks the end of Malaysian Chinese politics after 60 years of dwindling and divisive outcomes, as its modern patron UMNO itself struggles to survive.

Both sides of the political divide are trying to woo a vastly underestimated, non-homogenous rural Malay public.

Social media is now central to any Malaysian election campaign. In 2018, the opposition is facing a far better organised incumbent than last time.

Political Islam at GE14 isn't just a race between parties as democratisation throws up alliances and fractures to define Muslim society.

A new generation's contest over Sarawak's lost autonomy may force its GE14 voters to reconsider how today's leaders are trapped by the past.

Electoral changes recently rammed through parliament can mean winning power at GE14 with just 16.5% of the popular vote. But would such elections confer the legitimacy to rule?

A commentary on the Sufi poem of the peculiar whale, by the 16th-century Malay poet Hamzah of Barus.

The era of Malaysia's dominant federal government may be over as its leading states push for greater autonomy.

Can former minister and prime minister Najb Razak's ‘good friend’ Shafie Apdal sweep out Sabah's incumbents at GE14, and end up delivering power to Mahathir's opposition?

Reform-minded Malaysians are fatigued after two missed opportunities since 2008, with today's centrifugal politics generating even more social tensions. Not even Dr Mahathir’s surprise (re)emergence can mend those fractures, as Malaysians dream of the First World but still struggle in the Third as inequality worsens.

Reforming Bumiputera policy is a colossal project both rival coalitions are reluctant to tackle. Yet the political consensus, while striving to transcend ethnic policies in rhetoric, misconstrues and ignores the embedded preferential regime.

Sabah needs leaders and statesmen determined to solve its long overdue need for autonomy, without fear of injuring a federal government's pride.

Bersih’s legal strategy to check on electoral integrity has exposed and revealed much about the redelineation process, testing the relationships between Malaysia’s political institutions.

The resurgence of ‘old’ Mahathir against the Najib coalition has been matched with the ‘new’, the cheap smartphone.

As Malaysia rushes to its GE14 on 9 May, the new anti-fake news law is primed against the state's critics, emboldening speech vigilantism by outsourced censors linked to the ruling UMNO party.

With Malaysia's Parliament now dissolved in the official rush to GE14's polling day, Sabah and Sarawak are again crucial states determining the winning coalition.

The threat to eliminate all ‘fake news’ isn’t merely an assault on the freedom of speech, it’s also an affront to its beauty, efficacy, recall, and its very existence.

Closer scrutiny of Malaysian elections since the era of Najib Razak's father can sharpen the contrasts over winning—and losing—legitimacy.