The results of the Indian general election, which were declared this month, came as something of a shock for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Accustomed to landslide victories in the two previous general elections, which had given Modi ample latitude to shape parliamentary and policy outcomes, the party was taken aback when it failed to secure a parliamentary majority on its own this time because of an unsuspected upsurge of popular support for the opposition bloc. The results left Modi with no option but to seek the help of coalition partners in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
What has occurred in India attests to the reality of coalition politics, particularly coalition governance. Naturally, pan-national parties, such as the BJP, expect to govern exclusively or largely on their own. The same is true of the Congress Party, the party of Indian independence, which ruled the country from the federal Centre for long stretches before its hegemony was challenged by regional parties at the state level, and ultimately by the emergence of the BJP as a rival at both the federal and state levels. Now, the BJP is tasting the fruit of the same
anti-hegemonic logic that was visited on the Congress: Although the BJP remains India’s most popular party in federal elections — it scored much better than the Congress in the latest election — it is no longer capable of governing India on its own.
Should this development be seen as being inimical to India’s political stability and economic prospects? Not necessarily. True, the two state-based parties on which the BJP needs to depend in particular have their own agendas, which do not match the BJP’s national agenda completely. The Congress-led INDIA opposition bloc, which is within sighting distance of a parliamentary majority should it be able to attract the support of those regional parties and a few more, will no doubt do what it can to bring the government down on the floor of Parliament. Indian politics is no stranger to horse-trading. However, knowing this, the BJP no doubt will do all that it can to pursue what has been nicely dubbed coalition dharma in India: the continuous compromises necessary to sustain a coalition government. The BJP is not a naïve party. It knows exactly what coalition dharma means.
In that case, what will happen is that the BJP’s most controversial policies — which touch on matters of faith — will probably lose their traction because its coalition partners do not share its ideological agenda. The party will also have to finetune some of its economic policies, those that were perceived as being excessively friendly towards tycoons and large business houses. That way, political stability should continue in India, and it would be combined with economic policies that are sensitive to the pulse of public opinion.
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Since the exigencies of coalition governance would bring about those changes, the general election results should be complimented for having forced a rethink in the BJP — a development that would help to prevent it from losing power in the next general election because of an inability to change ideological and economic course on time.
This, indeed, is the true gift of coalition politics: It forces hegemonic parties from acting as if they possess an indefinite writ on the choices of the masses. By definition, coalition governments are more inclusive than others. The fact that no single party gets a majority of parliamentary seats means that the electorate is seriously divided. In these circumstances, the ability of different parties to work together and come up with viable compromises means that the political system is working well.
This point is amplified in a report by People’s Assembly, a South African website that aims to promote accountability and bridge the gap between ordinary people and their elected representatives. It says that in the democratic realm, “coalition governments often emerge as a testament to the vibrant tapestry of political ideologies and citizen voices. These unique alliances of political parties bring a distinctive flavour to democratic systems worldwide, emphasising cooperation and compromise as essential pillars of governance”.
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Indeed, coalition governments provide an invaluable democratic service by acting as a “built-in system of checks and balances” since no single party can exercise unchecked power and decisions have to be taken therefore on the basis of negotiation and consensus. This is a corrective process that not only prevents potential abuses of power but “encourages a culture of cooperation and compromise — a fundamental aspect of democratic governance”.
Coalition politics in Malaysia
Nevertheless, there are Indians who wonder about the immediate future. In this regard, political observer Ashok Ogra, writing for The Daily Excelsior, cites a popular saying: “Coalition politics is not the politics of the ideal; it is the politics of the possible”. This is by way of highlighting citizens’ fears over whether Modi will be able to manage the contradictions that a coalition government entails, given that he is “decisive and not consultative by nature” and “prefers operating through his trusted advisers and bureaucrats, and often gives short shrift” to elected representatives.
How Modi navigates his way through the new political scenario remains to be seen, but Indians could take heart from the course of Malaysian politics. It has always been coalition-centred because of the needs of inter-ethnic power-sharing and vote-pooling under the demands of the first-past-the-post electoral system. Citing this fact, political scientist Wong Chin-Huat noted in an article last year for The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, that “the number of serious coalitions has grown over the decades from one to two to now three national coalitions and two regional coalitions” following Barisan Nasional’s defeat in 2018. Shifting coalitions have replaced the system created by the permanent Alliance coalition in Malaysia’s early years.
Yet, stability continues to prevail. Indeed, it is sustained even by the changing dynamics of regional coalitions in Sabah and Sarawak. “Dominated by strongmen and fuelled by patronage, regional parties can realign and move in and out of coalitions at ease,” Wong writes, drawing attention to the way in which federal-state relations play out on the electoral field in Malaysia. Centre-state electoral relations in India have it somewhat better. They do not have to contend with the fundamental reality of race-based politics, although the BJP’s success in introducing a distinctly Hindu register in political mobilisation and consolidation has altered the secular landscape of India.
In Malaysia, the performance of the Anwar Ibrahim government must be judged by the exigencies of coalition politics. Indeed, Malaysia does not have just a coalition government but a unity government, which is essentially a coalition-of-coalition governments. It was created by the peculiar impasse produced by the November 2022 general election (GE15), in which the failure of the major contestants to win a parliamentary majority resulted in Malaysia’s first-ever hung parliament.
Disaster did not follow. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim went about crafting a workable (and still working) consensus among what commentator Kai Ostwald calls “strange bedfellows with a long history of political animosity” and component parties that “share few obvious programmatic similarities that might bridge divides”. How did this occur? It did because there was no alternative but a period of prolonged uncertainty that may have paralysed not just Malaysian politics but also the very workings of the economy.
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Of course, this reality did not stop the Opposition from going to work immediately to destabilise the new government. However, the Anwar administration has succeeded in countering such moves till now by practising the Malaysian version of India’s coalition dharma: the ability to keep coalition partners together by pointing out what the loss of parliamentary power would do to them. Also, Anwar has given his coalition partners enough of a stake in the processes of governance — by way of ministerial portfolios primarily — to ensure that they toe the line in their own partisan interests.
There is no way of knowing how political alignments will unfold in the coming years, but the point is that Malaysia is managing the demands of coalition politics well enough for other countries to take heart from its endeavours — should they ever need to form coalition governments. Perhaps India shows the way ahead.
The writer is founder and CEO of Pereira International, a Singapore-based political and strategic advisory consulting firm. An award-winning journalist and graduate alumnus of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, he is also a member of the Board of International Councillors at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. This article reflects the writer’s personal views
