Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia was born not out of a long-term ideological project, but out of political urgency. Its founding in 2016 was driven by a single overriding objective: to dislodge Najib Razak and weaken UMNO’s long-standing dominance of Malay politics. Under Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s patronage, Bersatu was designed primarily as a vehicle for his own political ambitions rather than any sincere attempt to serve as a party of the masses. n.Bersatu’s current collapse, marked by internal revolts, leadership crises and organisational disintegration, is not a sudden accident. It is the delayed consequence of how the party was conceived and led from the very beginning.
Mahathir’s leadership style has consistently privileged personalised authority over institutional development. During his long premiership, power was centralised in the executive, weakening norms of cabinet collective responsibility, parliamentary oversight and internal party democracy. This cultivated a political culture in which loyalty to the leader outweighed loyalty to institutions. Bersatu inherited this political DNA. It was never allowed to mature as a broad-based movement with a clear ideological platform and strong grassroots machinery. Influence flowed from proximity to leadership and usefulness within elite power struggles, not from internal legitimacy. Early unity was forged more by opposition to a common enemy than by shared political convictions. Once that enemy was defeated in 2018, the party’s internal hollowness became increasingly visible.
The fragility of this design was exposed in 2020 when Bersatu’s withdrawal from the ruling coalition precipitated the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan government. This was not merely a coalition reset; it represented a rupture with voters who had supported reform on the expectation of stability and institutional renewal. Mahathir’s resignation and the unresolved succession question destabilised both government and party, leaving Bersatu without strategic direction. The party drifted from being a governing anchor to becoming a bargaining unit within shifting coalition arithmetic. In this period, Bersatu’s political identity ceased to be defined by a voter mandate and became defined instead by its transactional value in elite negotiations.
More corrosively, Mahathir’s politics of manoeuvre fostered a party culture that privileged tactical positioning over organisational loyalty. Bersatu developed leaders adept at high-level politicking and consolidation but indifferent to the slower, less glamorous work of party-building. The party failed to cultivate the internal norms that sustain political organisations through adversity: transparent leadership transitions, credible internal dispute resolution, and a shared ideology/.
Today’s internal crisis is the most visible expression of these accumulated weaknesses. Bersatu is no longer merely contending with external rivals; it is imploding from within. Divisions have dissolved in protest, senior figures have been expelled or marginalised, and grassroots structures are openly challenging central leadership. What is unfolding is not simply a contest of personalities, but a crisis of legitimacy. Party members are questioning not only who leads Bersatu, but what Bersatu represents in a political landscape where it appears perpetually reactive rather than principled.
It is tempting to frame the current turmoil solely as a failure of present leadership. But that diagnosis is incomplete. The deeper problem lies in the political inheritance embedded at Bersatu’s founding. A party constructed on expediency, akin to a badly-run royal court, is structurally ill-equipped to manage dissent. Without institutionalised channels for leadership succession and criticism, internal disagreement becomes existential conflict. Without a clear ideological anchor, strategic disputes become zero-sum. The organisation becomes brittle, unable to absorb shocks without fracturing.
Mahathir’s responsibility, therefore, is not in the day-to-day management of Bersatu’s current leaders, but in the template he set. He normalised the idea that parties are instruments to be assembled and redeployed as circumstances require. That logic may be effective in moments of political crisis, but it is corrosive to long-term party-building. Bersatu inherited this logic wholesale. It became proficient at disruption but incapable of consolidation, adept at winning tactical battles but unable to sustain a coherent political project.
The implications extend beyond Bersatu. Its collapse reinforces a broader pattern in Malaysian politics, where parties fragment, coalitions realign, and voter trust erodes as mandates appear reversible at elite convenience. When parties lack internal coherence, democratic accountability weakens. Electoral promises become provisional, and governance becomes transactional. Bersatu’s unraveling thus reflects not only the failure of a single party, but the costs of a political culture that prioritises manoeuvre over institution-building.
If Bersatu is to survive in any meaningful sense, it must confront this inheritance directly. Rebuilding cannot be cosmetic. It requires a decisive break from personalised politics, a credible process of leadership renewal, and the construction of a party identity grounded in principles rather than positioning. Whether such a transformation is possible remains uncertain. What is clear is that Bersatu’s present crisis did not emerge in isolation. It is the long shadow of choices made at its birth, and the enduring imprint of Mahathir’s political method.
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