Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS)

Gabungan Parti Sarawak is the coalition that governs Sarawak. It exists because of what happened in May 2018. Barisan Nasional lost the federal government for the first time since independence, and on 12 June 2018 the four parties that ran Sarawak inside BN — PBB, SUPP, PRS and PDP — announced that they were leaving it and forming a coalition of their own. Every one of the four is a Sarawak party, and GPS contests only Sarawak seats.

The break was not just a change of name. GPS applied to the Registrar of Societies in early July 2018, and on 19 November 2018 the Home Minister told Parliament the registration had been approved. That matters more than it sounds: a registered coalition is a political association in its own right, with its own logo on the ballot, rather than a private understanding between parties that can be denied later.

GPS unveiled its logo on 9 January 2019 and launched formally in Kuching ten days after that, under the tagline "Sarawak First". Abang Johari Openg, who leads PBB, chairs it.

For a first-time voter the most useful thing to know about GPS is that it sits outside the peninsular contest between Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional, and has repeatedly chosen between them:

1. February 2020it backed Muhyiddin Yassin for Prime Minister while stating plainly that it was not a Perikatan Nasional component, only "friendly" to it.
2. 20 November 2022it pledged support for Perikatan first, then four days later said the choice of Prime Minister was for the Yang di-Pertuan Agong; Anwar Ibrahim was sworn in that day, and GPS became one of the coalitions in his unity government.
3. 3 December 2022Fadillah Yusof of PBB became a Deputy Prime Minister, the first from Sarawak.
4. 16 December 2022it signed the written cooperation agreement between the unity government's coalitions.

In Sarawak itself the coalition's position is close to unchallenged. At the December 2021 state election GPS took 76 of 82 seats on roughly 61 per cent of the vote, with turnout at 60.67 per cent. By April 2026 it held 79 of the 82, after by-elections and defections: PBB 47, SUPP 13, PRS 11 and PDP 8. Two months after that election the state constitution was amended to rename the Chief Minister as Premier, a title Abang Johari took on 1 March 2022.

Why the margins are so wide is where accounts diverge, and each belongs to whoever makes it. Arnold Puyok of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak points to development spending and the "Sarawak First" pitch bringing Dayak voters back. James Chin and other analysts quoted before the 2021 poll emphasised that the opposition vote was split four ways. PRS's James Masing, at the coalition's own launch, accepted the critics' description of GPS as "old wine in a new bottle" as fair about its leaders, while arguing the bottle was genuinely new.

The next test is close. Sarawak's assembly term expires in February 2027 unless dissolved earlier, and an election must follow within 60 days of dissolution — by April 2027 at the latest. A 2025 Ordinance raised the statutory number of elected seats from 82 to 99, but the new constituencies still need to be drawn and approved, and Abang Johari said in April 2026 that the election might yet be fought on the old 82. He also said GPS would field candidates in every seat.