Malaysia: Authoritarian again?

Patrick Ziegenhain
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PREMIUM

Jakarta / Sat, March 7, 2020 / 03:14 pm

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 )

Just 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 relative...