In the Name of Covid-19

The Democratic Reversal and the Return of Authoritarian Malaysia under Muhyiddin’s Perikatan Nasional

Abstract

In late February 2020, the democratically-elected Pakatan Harapan’s coalition government was toppled, arguably through a self-inflicted coup, by its component party Bersatu which brokered a deal with its allies from within and outside of the coalition. Based on a synthesis from Bridget Welsh’ ideas on political mandate and Andreas Schedler’s new institutionalism, this article explores how the royal mandate was taken advantage of by the newly formed coalition government, the Perikatan Nasional (PN), in confronting challenges for its survival by resorting to authoritarianism, blanketed by its policies to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. It is argued that, however, the pandemic brought an adverse effect to PN’s regime integrity in a way that it had both became the source of regime sustainability and regime subversion. While the democratic reversal is clearly apparent, the Muhyiddin’s administration failure to effectively deal with the challenges of good governance during the pandemic had eventually led to its own demise.