Restructuring Federal-State Relations in Malaysia: From Centralised to Co-operative Federalism?

摘要

The coming to power of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) opposition coalition in five states following the 2008 election has interrupted the one dominant party political process that has prevailed for more than 50 years, and that facilitated the Barisan Nasional (BN)'s domination of the centre and penetration into the states and local authorities. Nowadays, the PR-led states of Selangor and Penang in particular have challenged federal domination as never before. The old ways of bullying weaker and poorer opposition-led states such as Kelantan and Sabah in the 1990s have been rejected. The new balance of federal-state relations has allowed the BN-led states of Sabah and Sarawak to press for decentralisation of decision-making, increased development allocations, and a greater say in determining local issues. Hence, in spite of the absence of constitutional reforms vis--vis federal-state relations, some restructuring of those relations is underway. However, the regular occurrences of controversies suggest that Malaysia has still not transited from a centralised federalism to a more co-operative one.