INTRODUCTION

The Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition rose to power at the federal level in the 14th general election in May 2018 upon defeating the longstanding dominant and authoritarian Barisan Nasional (BN), only to fall less than twenty-two months after its prime minister Mahathir Mohamad resigned. This led to the appointment of Muhyiddin Yassin as the country's eighth prime minister. Since 1 March 2020, when the newly formed political coalition Perikatan Nasional (PN) took over the federal government, there has been unprecedented political instability, anomalous for a country that had only ever experienced the BN rule up to 2018. This resulted in changes in several states, with PH losing Johor, Malacca, Perak and Kedah as well. The Sabah state election also saw PH-aligned Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) being voted out of power, to be replaced by the PN-aligned United Alliance of Sabah. The three PH-led states of Selangor, Penang and Negeri Sembilan have remained stable, however, and have survived the national-level storm.

Selangor's situation is of particular interest. Of the original fifty seats that PH had, twenty-one were held by People's Justice Party (Parti Keadilan Rakyat, PKR). Given that former Menteri Besar Azmin Ali was one of the chief architects behind the Sheraton Move in February 2020 that led to the installation of the PN government, it was widely expected that this would cause some instability within PKR, which would in turn affect the Selangor state government's own position. Yet ten months later, the Selangor state government continues unwaveringly in the midst of the national political turmoil.

Selangor did experience several defections: four PKR assemblypersons defected to Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) and four of the five Bersatu assemblypersons although no longer part of the PH coalition (after Bersatu left PH) have continued to be PH-friendly independents as “followers of Tun” (Mahathir), with the exception of Selangor Bersatu Chairman Abdul Rashid Asari who, as a Muhyiddin supporter, supports PN. These defections have not been sufficient to change PH's position in Selangor, where it continues to hold forty-one of the fifty-six seats.