Malaysia is now 52 years old. During those years, a lot of changes and developments have taken place in its administrative style and politics. It is worth mentioning here that even though the administrative style did not change much, the politics has drastically changed.

For several years until around the 1978, Malaysia was governed by the Barisan Nasional (formerly known as The Alliance) comfortably. During this period of time, it was said that any Tom, Dick and Harry would win the election if he stood for BN. Until this period time PAS was also a member of Barisan Nasional.

During the year 1978, Datuk Asri, who headed PAS, decided to break away from Barisan Nasional and become an opposition party. PAS is am Islamic religious party and its strong base is and was Kelantan which it has ruled ever since.

However, Barisan Nasional has been winning all the Malaysian general elections comfortably rom the first until the recent 12 th general election. In all the elections, BN had been getting more than a two-thirds majority except the March 2008 elections.

What is the winning formula of BN, so much so, that even during bad times it managed to win elections? If you ask the leaders of BN, they would straight away say that it is due to its multiracial party under one umbrella known as Barisan Nasional.

Under this umbrella they have Umno (mainly made up of Malays), MCA (for ethnic Chinese), MIC (for the ethnic Indians), Gerakan and PPP (they claim to be multiracial parties but in reality they are otherwise) and the regional parties of Sabah and Sarawak.

Many political observers, pundits and the leaders of the opposition claim that the Barisan Nasional structure is racially inclined. This, they say, will not unite the various races of Malaysia but would in fact divide the Malaysians much further. Some blatantly quote it as being against the national unity.

The opposition alliance, mainly made up of PAS, DAP and PKR, also subscribe quietly to the above ‘winning formula’ of BN. The three parties of the opposition came up with an open agreement that they will all form an opposition alliance known as Pakatan Rakyat after the March 2008 election.

Earlier, to everyone’s surprise, including Pakatan Rakyat’s, the ruling BN, lost its two-thirds majority and only won by a simple majority. Furthermore, the opposition managed to capture five states ie, Kelantan, Kedah, Perak, Penang and Selangor.

If we assess the winning formula of Pakatan Rakyat, we can easily come to conclusion that it is also racially-based . How? The DAP is a Chinese-based party, even if PAS is an Islamic party, it cannot deny that is a Malay-based party like PKR even though the latter seems to be a multiracial party.

How did Pakatan Rakyat manage to get such an astounding result in the March 2008 general election? Unbelievably, it was also due to racial politics. The Malays voted for the DAP and the Chinese candidates of PKR bearing in their mind that the Malay candidates would get the Chinese votes elsewhere and vice-versa.

Now, can Pakatan Rakyat deny that they have employed a racially-inclined formula. It is the same formula that the BN has been using ever since 1957. Whether the racial formula is good or bad to the country, it is definitely a ‘winning formula’.

Some political parties like the Gerakan, DAP, PPP, PAS and some parties from East Malaysia might say that they are multiracial parties. But If we carefully consider their membership, we definitely can notice the dominance of one single community in each of the parties.

If BN was using the same ‘winning formula’, then why its disastrous performance in March 2008? It was mainly due to what had been promised and what eventually was not delivered after the 2004 elections.

Infighting amongst most of the component parties also contributed to the bad performance of BN. The main factor for BN’s blunder was their overconfidence in winning.

For Malaysians to really think on a multiracial mindset, it will take some time. It depends on Malaysians themselves and also their leaders. They should practice mutual trust, mutual respect and mutual help. They also need to think along national lines and not racial lines.

To conclude, I would like to quote Dr Mahathir Mohamad who said, ‘It was not a victory for Pakatan Rakyat but it was a gaffe of the Barisan Nasional’.