Sabah Election Results Undermine Malaysia’s Anwar

Welcome to Foreign policySoutheast Asia Brief.

Highlights this week: Elections in East Malaysia shake the government, Myanmar Scholarships Amnesty for thousands of political prisoners Floods hit the area again, called Jakarta The largest megacities in the world.

Elections held in the Malaysian state of Sabah on November 29 dealt a heavy blow to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Local parties of varying orientations swept the elections in Burnie state, raising broader questions about the country’s fragile ethno-political balance.

While all local parties support Anwar at the federal level, the arrangement is a quid pro quo that relies primarily on the central government’s support for greater autonomy for Sabah. Sabah-based parties now control 82 percent of the state parliament. Meanwhile, the so-called peninsular parties – which have a power base in Malaysia’s more populous mainland – have seen their vote shares collapse.

With general elections looming in 2028 at the latest, many viewed the Sabah elections as a test for the federal government. Anwar had inserted himself into the campaign, and banking on success would help consolidate his power.

In the end, the mainland government and opposition parties performed poorly, each winning only one seat.

The results reflect the strong “Sabah for Sabaheen” sentiment that characterized the campaign. Sabah and Greater Sarawak, the other Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, have long marched to a different drum from the rest of the country. Encompassing the northern coast of Borneo, they are separated by ocean from Peninsular Malaysia, resulting in a distinct history that saw them join Malaysia in 1963, six years after the country gained independence, as well as a distinct ethnic makeup. To this day, Malaysians traveling to East Malaysia from the mainland are subject to immigration controls and do not have an automatic right to reside there.

East Malaysians have also long felt marginalized by the peninsula, which dominates national politics and benefits from the east’s vast natural resource wealth. Sabah has the highest poverty rate of any Malaysian state.

However, in recent years, both eastern states have begun to flex their muscles. The fall in 2018 of Barisan Nasional, the coalition that had led Malaysia for decades, ushered in a period of political instability. East Malaysian parties often found themselves holding the balance of power. Without their support, the current federal government would have a slim majority of seven seats in Parliament.

In Sabah, the main issue was the demand for huge compensation payments. The Malaysian Constitution guarantees Sabah a 40 percent share of federal revenues collected in the state, but this was ignored from 1974 to 2021. In October this year, the courts ruled that the government owed Sabah decades of arrears in revenue. Despite the enormous financial cost, the government refused to appeal the ruling for fear of alienating Sabahan.

Sarawak state has been bolder recently, establishing a state oil company and planning to take over political areas such as health and education.

More may follow. In 2021, the two countries obtained a constitutional amendment that strengthened their special status. The next step may be to push an amendment that guarantees the two states 35 percent of the seats in the federal parliament. In recent years, the federal government has kept pro-independence voices marginalized by making concessions. How far will the government go before it feels it has to say no?

Myanmar releases political prisoners. Myanmar’s junta has granted amnesty to nearly 10,000 people who were either imprisoned or facing trial on political charges as part of a mass amnesty announced on November 27. The government granted clemency to about 3,085 prisoners, paroled 724 prisoners, and dropped charges against more than 5,500 other people who were either on trial or in hiding, according to state-run MRTV.

The move was interpreted as aiming to ensure eligible voters were able to participate in elections scheduled for December 28, which were widely condemned as a sham. All beneficiaries of this announcement had previously been charged under the so-called incitement law, which prohibits comments that incite public unrest and fear – and which has been widely used to arrest government critics. Before the mass amnesty, Myanmar had about 22,000 political detainees in prisons, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

At this stage, it does not appear that Aung San Suu Kyi, the former state counselor and prominent opposition figure, will be released. One figure already released is Kyi Toe, a senior member of Aung San’s National League for democracy party.

Mass pardons of this kind are not unusual. Earlier this year, the junta pardoned 4,893 prisoners for the traditional New Year on April 17. Among those subsequently released were some political prisoners, such as a film director and a journalist.

Floods hit Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Floods are sweeping Southeast Asia once again, killing about 604 people at the time of writing. Southern Thailand witnessed the heaviest rains recorded in 300 years, killing at least 162 people and affecting more than 3.8 million people. Across the Strait of Malacca in Sumatra, Indonesia, floods killed at least 442 people and affected 1.1 million people. Malaysia saw about 34,000 people forced to evacuate, most of them in the northern peninsula region bordering Thailand – fortunately no casualties were reported.

Meteorologists have suggested that weather conditions have been exacerbated by the interaction between two climate patterns, La Niña in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean Dipole. The first is cooling the central Pacific, which can boost the Southeast Asian monsoon, and has lasted for an unusually long time this year. The recent weather phenomenon is going through a phase that causes sea temperatures to rise above average in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia. This is happening against the backdrop of climate change as well, which has led to unusually high sea surface temperatures in the region.

In Thailand, there is a great deal of public anger directed at Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul over his botched handling of the extreme weather. With elections looming, some analysts I spoke to suggest this could hamper his ambitions.

Vietnam backs down from bicycle ban in capital The Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, has decided to impose restrictions on where gasoline-powered motorcycles can ride in the city next year. Large areas of the city center have been designated as low-emission zones. The government said the measures aim to reduce air pollution in the city, which has repeatedly topped global air pollution lists.

But this step was not at the level that many expected. The government had previously indicated that it was considering imposing a complete ban. The prospect of a complete ban has sparked concern among passengers and businesses alike. Sales of electric two-wheelers have risen rapidly, making Vietnam its third largest market in the world, after China and India. However, electric bikes still only account for about 12 percent of sales. Currently, the lion’s share of the 77 million motorcycles on Vietnam’s roads remain fossil fuel-powered.

Thailand’s Queen Mother Sirikit died at the age of 93 on October 24 at Chulalongkorn Hospital. Eleven elephants were painted pink to resemble the auspicious white elephants and traveled from the Ayutthaya Elephant Palace to Bangkok.

The Indonesian capital, Jakarta, has moved to ban the slaughter and consumption of dogs, according to an article in The Straits Times.

in foreign policy, Jack Adamovich Davies examines whether Cambodia’s fraud industry is too big to fail in light of new US sanctions.

A rare piece of frontline reporting on the impact of recent floods in Vietnam has been smuggled out in the form of an opinion piece. Le Phong writes about what he saw in Hoa Xuan commune in central Vietnam Fun Express.

Jakarta is now the world’s largest city, with a population of 41.9 million, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which has just released its 2025 World Urbanization Prospects report. While only 12 million people live within the city’s official boundaries, the Indonesian capital has long spread chaotically into neighboring provinces. Urban sprawl is colloquially referred to as Jabodetabek, a name given after Jakarta as well as the various cities it has absorbed as commuter areas, including Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi.

Jakarta alone has a population larger than the national population of more than half of ASEAN member states. They also represent about 14.7 percent of Indonesia’s population. Its dominance seems undisputed. Between 2000 and 2025, the city grew at a faster rate than the other two Indonesian urban centers with populations of more than 5 million, Bandung and Surabaya.

With Libra comes a degree of dysfunction. Traffic and pollution are evident. Climate change combined with widespread groundwater pumping means that parts of the north of the city are sinking into the sea.

Concerns about these challenges mean that Jakarta’s expansion has occurred historically despite the government’s efforts to stop it. Until about 2000, the government moved millions of people from the crowded island of Java – where Jakarta is located – to the less populated islands of Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi and Papua. The desire to control Jakarta’s expansion was one factor, along with other goals such as paying for more workers in the hinterland, anti-poverty programs, and the desire to consolidate control over the remote hinterland.

At the same time, the government constantly tried to limit movement to Jakarta. Under former President Suharto, the government tried to prevent unemployed migrants from coming to the city. Recently, the government planned to move the capital in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure. But with the new capital project faltering, Jakarta’s continued rise looks set to continue.