By: Wong Chin HuatScattered pictures/of the smiles we left behind/Smiles we gave to one another/For the way we were…Three and a half years into leading an ideologically diverse coalition government, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been busy courting the support of ethnic Malay voters. He now faces a formidable challenger for the urban, minority, pro-reform vote base that propelled his Parti Keadilan Rakyat which led the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition to power.In early May, two of his former ministers took over a small party and rebranded it to court Anwar’s increasingly disenchanted PKR/PH supporters. Former Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli, 50, and Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, 44, resigned from Parliament, reducing the majority’s Anwar’s Madani coalition government to 151, just three more than the two-thirds majority necessary for constitutional amendment. Rafizi has six more allies in the government backbench, whose departure would deny Anwar the super majority and might even trigger him to seek an early election.This is not just a succession struggle between the Gen X Rafizi and baby-boomer Anwar, 78. It poses a larger question: is inclusive reformist politics politically viable in a former British colony divided by reinforcing cleavages of ethnicity, religion, and language?Having broken away from The United Malays National Organization in 1998 after his purge and imprisonment by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar eventually came to power 24 years later in 2022 on the support of the party that had spurned and imprisoned him, along with regional parties from the eastern Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah.Despite winning 38 percent of votes and 37 percent of seats in the federal election, Pakatan Harapan was constantly accused of selling out the ethnic majority Malay-Muslims. This makes Anwar beholden not only to UMNO but also to the powerful Malay royalty and the predominantly Malay bureaucracy. To survive, Anwar went soft on kleptocrats in UMNO and his Sabah regional ally and tried hard to woo the Malay electorate.Not only have his efforts failed to pay off in winning UMNO’s loyalty and raising Malays’ approval, but Anwar has also alienated his predominantly Chinese urban base. In a leaked internal analysis in May, only seven of Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s 31 seats were considered safe, and that excluded Anwar’s. The larger casualty has been Anwar’s Chinese-based partner, the Democratic Action Party (DAP). DAP and PKR were wiped out from urban centres in the Sabah state election last November, prompting DAP to push Anwar to expedite reforms or the party would withdraw from his cabinet.Unlike Anwar, who rose meteorically in UMNO to become Mahathir’s Deputy Prime Minister after a brief stint as a Malay-Islamist student activist in the height of the Cold War, Rafizi and Nik Nazmi joined politics to defend Anwar and oppose UMNO after his purge from the nationalist party. Hailing from a humble working-class background, Rafizi was a model Malay talent that UMNO’s pro-Malay policies aspired to groom. Rafizi rose to fame for exposing UMNO’s corruption. His use of data analysis and targeted campaigning was widely credited for PH’s electoral success in the 2018 and 2022 elections.As Anwar’s deputy in PKR, Rafizi was appointed to economy minister, whose signature project to integrate the government data of every citizen into a single database, however, did not take off. His detractors see him as elitist and aloof and nicknamed him “the formula king.”Ironically, Rafizi regained his popularity when he started his “Hiruk” roadshow in PKR’s party election in early 2025 when Anwar’s daughter Nurul Izzah led a camp to challenge him and his ally. Meaning “noisy” in Malay, “Hiruk” is also an acronym for “Living the Idealism of Reform in the test of Power.” Rafizi and Nazmi lost the party election, which his camp alleged to have been marred by irregularities. They impressed many Malaysians by resigning from cabinet, citing that cabinet positions are based on party mandate.As a backbencher, Rafizi became an outspoken critic of Anwar’s coalition government. He took on Anwar’s confidantes in the government and private sector. The break with Anwar became irreversible when Rafizi’s teenage son was jabbed by syringe in a carpark, in an obvious warning to the father. The police never arrested a single suspect.Rafizi’s new party is known in acronym as “Bersama” (together) and in logo as a “mouse deer”, the resourceful animal that outsmarts bigger enemies in Malay folklore. Rafizi attacks Anwar’s compromises in the coalition and signals that its party would rather stay out of a coalition government than bend its principles. To indicate their break from established parties captured by dynasty and factionalism, Bersama talks about moving away from the patronage network that has blighted Malaysian politics for decades and recruiting non-partisan local talent as election candidates. They even aspire to build a lawmaker-based party in the British and American mold.Before the new party can change Malaysia’s landscape, however, they must be able to survive and triumph over PH, PN, and UMNO in multicornered contests. Bersama enthusiasts hope the mousedeer can replicate the success of Warisan – a Muslim-dominated multiethnic splinter of UMNO – in exterminating PH in virtual straight fights in Sabah. However, here in Peninsular Malaysia, many PH supporters fear that the shift to Bersama would not be complete and PN – especially the Islamist opposition PAS – may emerge as the minority winner. If such fear looms large, even incumbents from Rafizi’s camp may not survive.Rafizi would decide where his party would contest based on data analysis, but ultimately, his challenge is simple yet complex under Malaysia’s First-Past-The-Post elections: can Bersama avoid being seen as a spoiler to PH that would cannibalize PH’s vote base and hand over the seats to PN and UMNO?Bersama’s base is primarily middle class and Gens X and Y. Can Rafizi succeed where Anwar has failed in courting young Malays? If he can’t, Bersama may end like many other admirable political startups in Malaysia. If he can, then Malaysian politics may see changes beyond just a generational renewal.Wong Chin Huat is a political science professor at Sunway University, Malaysia