A New Divide
Pakatan Rakyat coalition was broken due to an internal conflict on June 16, 2015. DAP and PAS fought with each other after the latter wanted to implement hudud law in Kelantan. A splinter party named Amanah was born out of PAS.
About the same time, Mahathir returned to the political scene when he attended the Bersih 4 rally. Two years later, Tun M formed his own party known as PPBM. He couldn’t join any of the existing parties due to his past rivalry with them. Particularly PKR, the party was established to oust Mahathir during the Reformasi movement in 1998.
In PRU-13, Pakatan Rakyat competed for every parliamentary seats with the total of 223 seats. PKR contested for 99 parliamentary seats, while DAP and PAS competed for 51 and 73 seats respectively.
After PAS abandoned Pakatan Rakyat, PKR and DAP formed a new coalition with PPBM and Amanah. The new coalition is called Pakatan Harapan. Unlike PR in the 2013 General Election, PH focused on the parliamentary seats in the peninsular. Meanwhile, PKR and DAP in East Malaysia have their own partnership with Warisan. It was because Sabah and Sarawak have their own state autonomy.
But, Amanah and PPBM are absent in East Malaysia. In PRU-13, PAS won zero seats in East Malaysia. Thus, PH knew that Amanah will not do well in that region. For PPBM, they do not have any Sabahan or Sarawakian candidates. Mahathir “dictatorship” past in the region will not help either. Notable questionable actions by Mahathir were the 1991 Sabah political arrests and the construction of Bakun Dam at Sarawak in 1996.
Besides, both PKR and PAS competed in Labuan during PRU-13, making the district into a three-way battle with BN. It only benefited BN as the opposition votes have been divided. From that scenario, we knew that East Malaysia have their own way of handling politics.
Based on PRU-13 result in the peninsular, DAP had the best outcome. The party won 31 seats out of the 36 contesting seats.
PAS actually competed for the most seats with the amount of 65 seats. But, they only won 21 seats. While, PKR won 28 out of 64 seats.
When PAS left Pakatan Rakyat, 65 seats were vacant to contest in the Peninsular Malaysia. The seats should be given to Amanah to contest because the party is the splinter party of PAS. But then, there is PPBM. They need to divide all the 165 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia into four ways.
Pakatan Harapan splitted their contesting seats into 51 seats for PKR, 52 seats for PPBM, 35 seats for DAP and 27 seats for Amanah.
Amanah was the party who gave up the most contesting seats to PPBM at 38 seats. Dropping from 65 seats under PAS to 27 seats under Amanah. It was reasonable move because PAS did poorly in PRU-13. Meanwhile, DAP only gave out 1 contesting seat to PPBM.
PKR gave 13 seats to PPBM. Shifting from 64 contesting seats in PRU-13 to 51 contesting seats in PRU-14. Therefore, the newly-formed PPBM have the highest contesting seats at 52 seats.
On the surface, it is unfair for the other parties that PPBM had a high amount of contesting seats. PPBM only have Mahathir, Muhyiddin, Mukhriz and Syed Saddiq as their key politicians. Plus, Syed Saddiq is a fresh politician. But with the influence of Mahathir, the other opposition parties have no choice but to make way for PPBM.
Now, Pakatan Harapan have won PRU-14 and Mahathir is the Prime Minister. Will he divide the ministries in his cabinet evenly for each component party?