Malaysia is effectively leaderless at the worst possible moment. The country posted over 20,000 daily Covid-19 cases in August. Its hospitals are strained. And now, for the second time in 18 months, the prime minister is gone.
Muhyiddin Yassin resigned Monday. He will stay on as caretaker. But real power to govern is frozen until King Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah picks a successor. The king has ruled out a general election. Red zones are everywhere. Health facilities are stretched. A vote would be reckless, he decided.
So instead, the palace becomes the center of Malaysian politics. On Tuesday, the king summoned eight party leaders. He told them to stop squabbling. He told them the next prime minister must not be vindictive. He told them all parties must work together on the pandemic and the economy. These are not small asks in a fractured parliament.
The king holds the constitutional authority to appoint a candidate who commands majority support. That is the rub. No one clearly does.
Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim left the palace Tuesday and said the king stressed unity. Anwar leads a three-party alliance. He is a leading contender. But he currently has the backing of only 90 lawmakers. That is short of the 112 needed for a simple majority. He needs more. He needs defectors or coalition partners he does not yet have.
Muhyiddin lasted less than 18 months. Public anger over his pandemic handling drove him out. Malaysia recorded among the world’s highest infection and death rates per capita. The numbers are not abstract. They are the reason he is gone. They are the reason the king is meeting party leaders instead of calling an election. They are the reason the next prime minister will inherit a crisis, not a country.
The stakes are concrete. A seven-month state of emergency and a lockdown since June failed to flatten the curve. Daily cases in August exceeded 20,000. That is not a statistic. That is a health system under siege. That is economic activity stalled. That is a population losing patience.
The king asked lawmakers to submit their preferred candidate’s name by Wednesday. That is a tight deadline. It forces decisions. It forces compromise. Or it forces stalemate.
Anwar needs to convince enough lawmakers that he can govern. But the king’s emphasis on a non-vindictive leader suggests fears of political payback. A new prime minister who pursues vendettas will not unite parliament. He will paralyze it. And paralysis, with Covid-19 still spreading, is not an option.
Whoever gets the job will face the same pandemic the last man could not beat. The same economy. The same exhausted public. The same fractured coalition of parties that brought down Muhyiddin. The king can appoint someone. The king cannot make them succeed.
Malaysia is not just choosing a prime minister. It is choosing whether the next government can function at all. That is what Tuesday’s meetings at the palace were really about. That is what Wednesday’s deadline will decide.
