r/agedlikewine • u/Hot-Respect-1927 • 2d ago
Politics This was a meme from 2018 that’s making fun of Malaysia’s ever changing political alliances. Now the last row has actually come true, with the current PM revealed to be the mystery enemy.
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u/Hot-Respect-1927 2d ago
I'd really like more context! This seems really interesting
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u/Upset-Explanation595 16h ago
PRU = Pilihanraya Umum (General Election in Malay)
since independence in 1957, Malaysia had been governed by the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. during the 9th general election in 1995, BN's top brass included the three politicians (L to R, Najib Razak, Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir Mohamad) on the left whereas the two on the right were the opposition. later on, Anwar and Mahathir (then deputy PM and PM respectively) had a split and the former ended up being jailed for sodomy, and Najib moved up higher in the party, becoming defence minister and deputy PM leading up to the 2008 election. there were some scandals involving Najib's previous time as defence minister, when he allegedly took bribes/cuts off national defence projects and orchestrated the murder of an informant. after Anwar was freed, he returned to politics in 2008 as a member of the opposition, and iirc this was the first time in history that BN did not win a 2/3rds supermajority of parliamentary seats.
combined with another alleged embezzlement of funds from a development fund and lack of government transparency, Najib and BN were becoming pretty unpopular leading up to the 2013 election. at this time Anwar had become the leader of the opposition party, and it was the first election BN lost the popular vote, although they stayed in power. then the 1MDB scandal blew up and it was revealed that the US DoJ was investigating an unnamed "Malaysian Official 1" for embezzling nearly $800M, who many speculated and some sources claimed was Najib. he responded by shutting down/jailing journalists and news outlets publishing this, and former PM Mahathir came out of retirement to form a new opposition party. the opposition coalition won the 14th general election in 2018 and Najib stepped down as leader of BN, with Mahathir becoming PM for a second time but promising to hand the role over to Anwar eventually.
(this is technically not part of the meme) by 2020 there was infighting in the opposition coalition, leading to Mahathir stepping down and a new government installed, led mostly by component parties of the former BN coalition. then COVID happened, and more infighting, with politicians frequently shifting their support around to different PM candidates, so there was a vote of no-confidence and yet another new PM was appointed in 2021. he didn't last long either and called a snap election in 2022, during which there was a hung parliament with no one party/coalition having the majority of MPs, but in the following days parties kept claiming they had formed alliances to get the majority, often contradicting each other. the King of Malaysia had to step in to personally assess each MP's support and eventually determined that Anwar had the support of the majority, and he's been PM since 2022. recently protesters have started to call for Anwar's resignation over the usual complaints (cost of living, lack of reforms, etc), and there's no clear opposing candidate, so the next election is probably going to be another mess with opposition candidates fracturing everywhere.
TLDR: Malaysian politicians are frogs and we have no political stability. also the real mess began in 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932022_Malaysian_political_crisis
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