Alliance (Perikatan)

The Alliance is where Malaysian coalition politics starts. In January 1952 the Kuala Lumpur division of UMNO and the Selangor branch of MCA agreed to fight the Kuala Lumpur municipal election together rather than against each other. The two parties were built on communal lines — one Malay, one Chinese — and the arrangement was announced as a "non-communal, non-party" understanding. It won 9 of 12 seats. That local experiment is the origin of every multi-ethnic coalition Malaysia has had since.

It scaled quickly. A national convention followed on 23 August 1953, and the national Alliance was set up the following month with a working council. The Malaysian Indian Congress joined in 1954, and from then the Alliance was the UMNO-MCA-MIC formula: three parties, each representing one community, negotiating with one another before facing voters as a single bloc.

Not everyone stayed. The Perak Progressive Party joined for the 1954 local elections and left in 1955, on its own account because it was given no seats to contest.

At the Federation's first federal election, held in July 1955 for 52 elected seats, the Alliance won 51 on the slogan "Independence in Four Years". That mandate is what took Tunku Abdul Rahman, Abdul Razak Hussein, Ismail Abdul Rahman and H. S. Lee to the London constitutional conference in January 1956, alongside the Malay Rulers' representatives, where they obtained British agreement to independence. Merdeka came on 31 August 1957.

One detail is worth pausing on because it cuts against how coalitions are usually described. The Alliance was not registered as a party until 30 October 1957 — two months after independence, and more than two years after it had won the country's first election and formed its government.

Before that it had a symbol the election authorities recognised, but no registered constitution of its own. When registration came, the constitution opened membership to any party of a national character and vested control in a national council of 16 UMNO, 16 MCA and 6 MIC representatives, which is the arithmetic of the arrangement stated plainly.

Sabah and Sarawak ran their own Alliance organisations rather than joining the Malayan one.

Sarawak

Sarawak's alliance, established in July 1962, brought together BARJASA, the Sarawak Chinese Association, SNAP, PESAKA and PANAS, with PANAS leaving before the 1963 elections.

Sabah

Sabah's alliance contested the 1962 local elections as USNO, BUNAP and UPKO.

Federally the Alliance won 74 of 104 seats in 1959 and 89 in 1964. Then came 1969. The completed 144-seat table gives the Alliance 90 seats, short of two-thirds, though the count is genuinely disputed because polling in Sabah, Sarawak and one peninsular seat was suspended after the 13 May violence and finished only in 1970 and 1971. An Emergency was declared on 15 May, Parliament was suspended, and the National Operations Council governed until February 1971.

What Abdul Razak Hussein built afterwards was a much larger coalition. In Sarawak BUMIPUTRA and PESAKA merged into PBB in 1973.

1. July 1970SUPP was brought in in Sarawak.
2. February 1972Gerakan formed a coalition government with the Alliance in Penang.
3. 1 January 1973A formal Alliance-PAS government began at state and federal level.
4. 1 June 1974Barisan Nasional was registered, and the election that August was fought under its name.

Whether that counts as the Alliance being renamed or being replaced is genuinely argued over: no record was found of the Alliance being dissolved or de-registered, and none of its registration passing to Barisan Nasional.