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Malaysia: Authoritarian again?
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This handout from Malaysia's Department of Information taken and released on March 1, 2020 shows Malaysia's incoming Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin (L) receiving documents from King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah (R) before taking the oath as the country's new leader at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur. (AFP/Maszuandi Adnan / Malaysia's Department of Information )
J
ust recently we witnessed a change of government in Malaysia. It did not happen through elections but because a relatively small group of parliament members crossed the floor from the government camp to the opposition camp so that the latter had a majority in the Dewan Rakyat, the national parliament of Malaysia.
At first view, this is not a tragedy but quite a common procedure in a parliamentary system where, in contrast to presidential systems of government like in Indonesia or the United States, the government relies on the constant support of a parliamentary majority.
In 2018, for example, the prime ministers of Spain and Sweden, Mariano Rajoy and Stefan Löfven, were removed from their positions after motions of no confidence were successful.
In Germany, long-term government leader Helmut Kohl became for the first time chancellor in 1982 after he convinced the relatively small faction of Liberals, which were the coalition partner of ruling chancellor Helmut Schmidt (Social Democrats), to switch sides and, after a successful vote of no confidence in parliament against Schmidt, was able to form a new government coalition with the newly gained parliamentary majority.
The Malaysian case in February and March 2020, however, is different and must be regarded as more critical for three reasons.
First, the process of the side-switching of certain parliament members was not transparent, since there was neither an open vote of no confidence against acting prime minister Mahathir Mohamad nor an open parliamentary election in favor of Muhyiddin Yassin. Many observers have questioned if the latter really has the support of at least 113 of the 222 members of the Dewan Rakyat.
The reference to the Malaysian king who came to the conclusion that there is a parliamentary majority is not completely convincing since there is so far no clear proof of the alleged majority.
