Sunday, March 1, 2020

Malaysia's new PM sworn in

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51695463

The new Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, comes from the same party (BERSATU) as Mahathir Mohamad, the previous PM.

I'll make a short tangent here to explain something. Mahathir was PM previously, from 1981-2003. Anwar Ibrahim, who I mentioned in my previous post, was Deputy PM under him, and expected to be his successor. He was fired from that post and tossed from the party instead.

Anwar's successor was Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, He then became Prime Minister. His Deputy was Najib Razak, who then became Prime Minister. Until he was fired, and tossed from the party, Muhyiddin Yassin was his Deputy Prime Minister.

Due to being fired from the former ruling party, Muhyiddin Yassin is technically from Mahathir Mohamad's party, but it is not questioned that the former ruling UMNO fully endorses him now, at least, as Prime Minister (Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who was Deputy Prime Minister after Muhyiddin Yassin, now leads the party, and seems keen on keeping that job)


It is not clear just yet how the new numbers in Parliament will shake out. It seems the government is a coalition of 93 members, 39 from UMNO, 30 from BERSATU, 18 from PAS, and 6 others. There seems to be a C&S agreement from 19 members, mostly from the Sarawak parties, but there are some disputes about this. If all 19 back the government, this gives them a total of 112, contrasted with 110 opposition members, 94 of which are from the PH alliance.

No comments:

Post a Comment