a hung parliament

Malaysia just had its 15th general elections and for tue first time in its 65 year history as an independent country, no party (or pre election coalition) garnered the majority seats. Its a hung parliament. 

The King's office has issued a decree to have the parties form a majority coalition and to present it to him by 2pm tomorrow. I do find it surprising that he is not asking for the party with the most seats to attempt that first. Indeed, I alerted the PH leader's office that get the constitutional lawyers to check if what the King has asked for is in keeping with our laws. Shouldn't he first allow the ticket with the most seats the chance to form the government first before asking the next party to do so. Because it can end up with the “losing” parties combining to form the government which ultimately perverts the will of the people. 



Within our office, there has been some exchanges of views and here is mine:

That no party/pre-election coalition would get majority has been widely predicted. Even the fundamentalist Islamic party getting more seats is not surprising reflecting the trends towards conservatism (even extremism) the world over. 

That these are not surprising developments however doesn’t mean these are good developments. And how good or bad it is depends on what the two leading coalitions (PH, led by my friend Anwar Ibrahim; or PN, led by Muhyiddin who won power through the back door by betraying Anwar) can cobble up. 

Anwar’s coalition includes the Chinese-dominated DAP who has proven to be difficult bedfellows esp with the Malay parties. So he has his work cut out. That said he has the largest number of seats.

A partnership with BN, the erstwhile ruling party, would easily get both sides over the line. However that partnership would certainly entail pardoning Zahid (who has 42 outstanding corruption charges) and possibly also Najib (who has been found guilty). 

On to our business: I think the Public Sector business will need to be rebuilt (yet again). The ministers who are key buyers of our work to date (MOF, MITI) both lost their seats as did MOH Minister who had bought us in the past. They are the larger consulting users so in any scenario with any coalition these three buyers won’t be in play. 

If Anwar becomes PM, we will have a good chance as over the past years, I have seen him umpteen times to talk about the country’s socio economic agenda and he is a big fan of SEDA and has mentioned it several times in parliament (and I even played the clip of him doing so at a global plenary back in 2019). So we are in play for a KSA level whole of country transformation should he win. 

On the SWF side, we don’t have a large book of business today and so if anything the impact could even be positive as the current crop of CEOs have proven to be small buyers. 

On the GLC side, the relationships we have at P, M, T, S etc should continue regardless of who is in power as we have served them through various regime change in the past 5 years. 

On the private sector side, my tycoon friends are optimistic. They welcome a legitimately elected government (rather than a back door one) and with the anti-hopping law in place, they are hopeful that a semblance of stability will return and the environment for doing business will improve.

In any case, the best people to advise how to create a positive enabling environment for socioeconomic development is us and we will be ready to do this bringing the best of firm to bear.

My two sen 😀 worth