Barisan Alternatif
The Barisan Alternatif (BA; Alternative Front ) was a political coalition of four parties in Malaysia . It was founded in 1999 as a counterweight to the ruling Barisan Nasional , and disintegrated after the defeat in the parliamentary elections in 2004. In 2008, three of the four member parties of the Barisan Alternatif formed again into a coalition, the Pakatan Rakyat .
founding
The coalition was founded as a counterweight to the Barisan Nasional , whose member parties have been in government with a two-thirds majority since Malaysia's independence . On October 24, 1999, the four largest opposition parties agreed to work together in the election campaign. These parties were the Islamist Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), the social democratic Democratic Action Party (DAP), the liberal Parti Keadilan Rakyat (Keadilan) and the democratic socialist Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM).
General election 1999
The most successful party of the Barisan Alternatif in the 1999 parliamentary elections was the PAS, which received a majority of the votes in the states of Kelantan and Terengganu and a third of the votes in Kedah and increased the number of its parliamentary seats from 7 to 27. In contrast, the result of the DAP with 10 seats was rather disappointing. The newly founded Keadilan only won five seats, the PRM none at all.
Overall, the Barisan Alternatif was able to win 42 of the 192 seats in the Malaysian parliament . The Barisan Nasional was able to defend its absolute majority with 148 seats (77%).
Decay
Right from the start, the alliance was burdened by the fact that it is a declared goal of the PAS to turn Malaysia into an Islamic state of God and was also not prepared to publicly withdraw this goal. However, a temporary compromise could still be reached and theocracy was not recorded as a goal in the joint program of the BA.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA , the DAP left Barisan Alternatif on September 21, 2001.
After the split, the 2004 election led to conflicts within the coalition. In many cases, the allied parties could not agree on a common candidate. The BA won only eight parliamentary seats. Seven of these went to PAS and one to Keadilan. After the election, the coalition finally broke up.
Pakatan rakyat
For the parliamentary elections in 2008 , three of the four Barisan Alternatif parties formed a new coalition, the Pakatan Rakyat . These are the PAS, the DAP and the Keadilan. The PRM competed independently. The new coalition managed to win 82 of 222 seats, which meant that the ruling Barisan Nasional lost the two-thirds majority that constitutional changes allow.