Institute of Commonwealth Studies

The politics of the areas now known as Malaysia have been dominated since independence by ethnic divisions which have permeated the economic as well as the cultural and political spheres. While the Malays form a majority of the population under the British they were largely excluded from urban roles and economic ownership in favour of the large Chinese minority, while the Indian community largely worked in serflike conditions on the peninsula's rubber plantations. The Federation of Malaya was created in 1952, and the aforementioned differences were initially resolved by the formation of the Alliance Party comprising the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the Malayan - later Malaysian - Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malayan - later Malaysian - Indian Congress (MIC). This multi-racial umbrella organisation presided over independence in 1957 and the merger with Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah which created the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 (Singapore left in 1965). Yet subsuming potentially antagonistic groups inside the Alliance almost guaranteed that the challenge to one-party rule would draw on the dissatisfaction of ethnic groups which no longer felt the original parties were representing their interests, and so new parties emerged in opposition, most notably the largely Malay Parti Islam-Se-Malaysia (PAS) and the predominantly Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP). The advances of the latter in the 1969 elections led to communal rioting and the two-year suspension of parliament, which was dominated upon its recall by a new coalition, the Barisan Nasional, based upon the Alliance but with a greater Malay dominance. This party has remained in power since, presiding over the impressive Malaysian growth of the New Economic Policy period of the 1970s and 1980s but also over a democratic process which looked increasingly unlikely to offer any possibility of a change of government.