ASEAN Beat | Politics | Southeast Asia

Malaysian PM’s Coalition Suffers Significant Defeat in Johor State Election

Barisan Nasional, the Grand Old Party of Malaysian politics, has been aided by a growing disillusionment with Anwar’s leadership and discord among its Malay-Muslim rivals.

Onn Hafiz Ghazi, the chief minister of Malaysia’s Johor State, greets supporters while campaigning for the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in the state’s Kulai District, Jul. 9, 2026.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s coalition has suffered a significant setback during a state election in Johor, losing ground to its main federal coalition partner, with whom it is set for a possible showdown at the next general election.

Barisan Nasional (BN), the incumbent coalition in Johor, an economically important state at the tip of peninsular Malaysia, ​secured a commanding victory in Saturday’s polls, winning 48 of 56 state assembly seats, up from 40 at the last election in 2022. Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition won the remaining eight seats, down from 12 previously.

While the poor result in Johor has no direct bearing on Anwar’s parliamentary majority at the federal level, it could widen the rift between PH and BN ahead of the next general election, which must be held by 2028 but could be called earlier.

The two coalitions joined forces to form ​a government after a close general election in 2022, but were also unlikely partners. Their coalition brought together two parties – Anwar’s People’s Justice Party (PKR) and the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the main component of BN – that had been fierce rivals for years.

As Asif Ullah Khan wrote in these pages last week, while the two parties currently need each other to remain in power in Putrajaya, “they are simultaneously competing to become the dominant force of tomorrow.”

For now, the rivalry is playing out at the state level in Johor and Negeri Sembilan, which is scheduled to hold an election on August 1. As Khan wrote, “Both coalitions are using these elections to consolidate their political bases, regain lost supporters, and improve their bargaining position ahead of the next general election.”

While Pakatan and BN insist their federal ​partnership can co-exist with rivalries at the state level, there is now a growing instability in the ruling coalition. Anwar said in May ⁠he would consider calling a snap general election if these divisions became too much to manage.

According to an analysis published by Channel News Asia (CNA), BN’s decisive victory “was driven by the star power of its de facto chief minister candidate Onn Hafiz Ghazi,” who campaigned energetically across Johor and has since been sworn in for a second term as chief minister. It also helped by the weakness of the pan-Malay Perikatan Nasional (PN) opposition coalition, which is still reeling from the recent defection of the Islamist party PAS. PN lost all ​33 seats that it contested in Johor, including the three it previously held.

As James Chin, a professor of Asian Studies at the University of Tasmania, said in a post on X, the lack of a “credible Malay/Muslim challenger,” coupled with Onn’s strong appeal, made UMNO “virtually unstoppable.”

Meanwhile, PH suffered from lower turnout in areas where ethnic minorities, particularly Chinese Malaysians, form the largest bloc of voters. As Chin told CNA, “This suggested that many of the Chinese voters did not come out to vote, and likely they are disillusioned with........

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