BN-PH pendulum will lead to growing political cynicism

 If each electoral cycle produces hope followed by disappointment, citizens may conclude that elections themselves cannot meaningfully improve material conditions.

From Kua Kia Soong

The electoral oscillation between Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH) can be understood not primarily as a contest between fundamentally different social projects, but as competition between factions of the same capitalist order.

The defeats of PH in Johor following earlier setbacks in Sarawak reveal structural features of Malaysian politics rather than simply campaign successes or failures. For those of us who have lived through post-independence Malaysia, the MCA-fication of DAP has indeed come full circle – it’s almost surreal!

The election cycles of liberal democracy

Like the flailing liberal democracies of the West, Malaysian parliamentary democracy tends to present voters with a choice between parties committed to managing capitalism rather than transcending it. Malaysia’s experience over the past decade illustrates this dynamic.

PH’s historic victory in 2018 generated enormous expectations. Many workers, youth, and middle-class Malaysians believed that defeating BN would usher in a qualitatively different political order. Yet PH inherited an economy integrated into global capitalism and largely accepted its institutional constraints. Fiscal prudence, investor confidence, export competitiveness, and private-sector-led growth remained central objectives. You couldn’t even raise wealth taxes in case you spooked the super-rich, the finance minister from DAP said.

The result was a familiar contradiction. While smaller corruption scandals were addressed to varying degrees, the underlying class relations remained intact. Rising living costs, insecure employment, stagnant wages relative to productivity, housing affordability, and dependence on low-wage labour persisted.

Consequently, disappointment replaced enthusiasm. The electorate swung back towards BN in several state contests – not necessarily because BN had become more attractive, but because PH failed to fulfil many of the transformative hopes attached to its 2018 victory. This is less irrational voter behaviour but rather, the recurring crisis of reformism.

The new normal and why the cycle repeats

The repeated alternation between BN and PH reflects several structural realities.

First, both coalitions ultimately defend capitalist property relations. They may differ over governance, corruption, affirmative action, civil liberties, or administrative reforms, but neither proposes abolishing capitalist ownership of major industries or replacing production for profit with democratic economic planning. They have accepted Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s privatisation as God-given truth or else converted GLCs into political party fiefdoms.

Second, electoral politics channels popular dissatisfaction into periodic changes of government while leaving economic power largely untouched. Major banks, plantation conglomerates, energy companies, developers, and multinational corporations continue to determine investment, employment, and production regardless of which coalition governs.

Third, every incoming government eventually confronts similar constraints: pressure from financial markets; dependence on private investment; global commodity prices; foreign direct investment competition; budgetary limitations.

Governments managing corporate capitalism eventually administer many of the same economic imperatives, even if their rhetoric differs considerably.

The limits of liberal reform

PH represented a broad alliance including liberals, social democrats, Islamists, and former Umno figures. Such coalitions can mobilise against corruption or authoritarianism, but their social base often pulls them in contradictory directions. The urban middle class may prioritise institutional reform. Business interests demand stability. Workers seek higher wages. Rural communities seek subsidies and development. Ethnic politics continues to influence resource distribution. Reconciling these interests without fundamentally altering ownership relations is extremely difficult. Thus, reforms often become incremental while structural inequalities persist.

Malaysia’s political history has encouraged electoral competition to revolve around ethnic representation, religious identity, anti-corruption, leadership personalities, regional autonomy. Class politics rarely becomes the primary organising principle.

PSM has built respected grassroots campaigns around labour rights, housing, healthcare, migrant workers, and indigenous communities. Yet these struggles have rarely translated into a mass political movement capable of contesting state power. The left in Malaysia has become overly localised and activist-oriented, lacking the organisational reach, trade union density, workplace presence, and political education necessary to develop enduring working-class consciousness on a national scale.

The economy under continued capitalist management

If the BN-PH cycle continues, Malaysia’s economic trajectory is likely to exhibit continuity more than rupture. Several tendencies may persist: modest GDP growth tied to exports; increasing automation and technological upgrading; continued reliance on migrant labour in key sectors; rising household indebtedness; expensive urban housing; precarious employment through contract and gig work.

Governments may introduce targeted welfare programmes and subsidies to mitigate hardship. Yet these measures treat symptoms rather than causes. Capital accumulation requires firms to maximise profits, restrain labour costs, and compete internationally. This places continual pressure on wages, working conditions, and public expenditure.

For workers, alternating governments may produce meaningful differences in areas such as labour regulation, civil liberties, or social spending. These differences should not be dismissed. Nevertheless, neither coalition fundamentally challenges the extraction of surplus value through wage labour. Workers therefore continue experiencing familiar pressures: inflation outpacing wage growth; insecure contracts; longer working hours; weakening union power; rising retirement insecurity; privatization of essential services. Meanwhile, wealth remains concentrated among large corporations, politically connected capitalists, and financial institutions.

Growing political cynicism

The greatest long-term danger is not simply alternating governments but growing political cynicism. If each electoral cycle produces hope followed by disappointment, citizens may conclude that elections themselves cannot meaningfully improve material conditions. This disillusionment can produce divergent outcomes.

One possibility is declining voter participation and political apathy. Another is increasing support for more authoritarian or populist forces promising order, stability, or ethnic protection. A third possibility would be the gradual emergence of independent working-class politics rooted in workplaces, unions, tenant organisations, and social movements rather than electoral coalitions dominated by elite politicians. Whether such a movement emerges depends less on parliamentary arithmetic than on sustained class organisation outside Parliament.

When will new forms of political organisation emerge?

The repeated swings between BN and PH simply reflect competition between different political blocs administering the same underlying economic system. Electoral victories and defeats matter – they can affect democratic freedoms, corruption, and public policy – but they do not by themselves transform the social relations that shape production, wealth and power.

The persistent weakness of socialist politics in Malaysia reflects both the resilience of ethnic and patronage-based political structures and the difficulty of constructing a broad class-based movement within a capitalist economy integrated into global markets. As long as working-class organisation remains comparatively weak and fragmented, elections are likely to continue functioning as contests over who manages capitalism rather than whether it should be fundamentally reorganised.

From this perspective, the recurring alternation between BN and PH is less a sign of democratic renewal than of a political system in which dissatisfaction circulates between rival governing coalitions without resolving the underlying contradictions of inequality, labour precarity, and concentrated economic power. Whether that cycle continues – or is eventually disrupted by new forms of political organisation – will shape not only Malaysia’s electoral future but also the everyday lives of its working people. - FMT

Kua Kia Soong is a former MP and the principal of New Era College.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.