Is Bersama just old politics in new clothes?

Kua Kia Soong

Parti Bersama Malaysia’s 12-point programme reflects genuine public anger over stagnant wages, rising living costs, declining public services, widening inequality and the exhaustion of decades of neoliberal economic policy.

Its promises of universal childcare, public healthcare, affordable housing, wage growth and institutional reform show that even mainstream parties can no longer ignore the deepening social crisis confronting ordinary people in Malaysia.

But the central question is not whether Bersama offers new rhetoric. The question is whether it offers a genuinely new political direction distinct from both Barisan Nasional (BN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH).

At its core, Bersama treats Malaysia’s crisis largely as a failure of governance, corruption control, policy implementation and institutional efficiency. It assumes that a cleaner, more competent, meritocratic capitalism can still deliver prosperity for everyone in Malaysia.

The economy is working as designed

Yet Malaysia’s economy is not malfunctioning accidentally. It is functioning precisely as capitalism often functions: concentrating wealth upwards while wages stagnate, labour becomes more precarious, and essential needs such as housing, healthcare, education and childcare become increasingly commodified.

Over the past five decades, enormous wealth has accumulated in the hands of a narrow corporate and political elite while ordinary people face mounting household debt, insecure employment, unaffordable homes and declining social mobility.

Malaysia today does not suffer from a shortage of wealth. It suffers from extreme inequality in how wealth and opportunity are distributed.

Bersama criticises corruption, rent-seeking and “Ali Baba” arrangements. But it does not seriously confront the concentration of wealth itself.

The programme attacks inefficiency while leaving untouched the deeper structures of corporate ownership, monopolistic power, inherited wealth, speculative finance and elite domination over the economy.

This reflects a familiar reformist belief that capitalism would function fairly if only it were cleaner, smarter and better managed.

Unanswered race question

Most crucially, Bersama has not clearly answered the defining national question that has haunted Malaysia since 1971: how exactly will it address racialised economic policy differently from BN and PH?

For more than half a century, ethnic-based policies have been justified in the name of redistribution and national stability.

Yet the results have been deeply contradictory. While a politically connected capitalist elite has flourished, inequality within all ethnic communities has widened dramatically.

Large numbers of ethnic Malays, Chinese, Indians, Sabahans and Sarawakians alike continue to struggle with low wages, precarious work, poor public services, rising costs and shrinking opportunities.

At the same time, Malaysia has experienced one of the region’s most serious long-term brain drains. Nearly two million people are estimated to have left the country since 1971: professionals, academics, entrepreneurs, scientists and skilled workers. They increasingly see Malaysia as offering limited opportunities under a system shaped by quotas, patronage politics and uneven access to advancement.

Bersama therefore owes the people of Malaysia a clear answer: does it intend to maintain race-based affirmative action indefinitely under softer technocratic language, or is it prepared to advocate for a fundamentally new framework based on class, poverty, regional inequality and universal social rights regardless of ethnicity?

A genuine third force would recognise that poverty, precarity and exploitation cut across ethnic lines. It would reject both communal chauvinism and elite multicultural tokenism.

Instead of distributing limited opportunities through ethnic categories that often benefit politically connected elites, a progressive alternative would direct resources towards the low-income people, working-class households, the rural poor, Orang Asli communities, Sabah and Sarawak underdevelopment, and vulnerable people of every background.

Such a transition towards class-based universalism would not ignore historical inequalities. On the contrary, it would address them more honestly and effectively through social need rather than ethnic categorisation that has too often entrenched patronage, resentment, dependency and elite capture.

Without confronting this issue directly, Bersama risks merely reproducing the same post-1971 political formula under a more polished technocratic vocabulary.

The people of Malaysia have already witnessed decades of governments promising “reform”, “good governance” and “national unity” while preserving the same structures of ethnic management and elite accumulation.

Welfare without redistribution

The contradiction is also visible in Bersama’s economic promises.

The programme simultaneously pledges continuous gross development product (GDP) growth, higher wages, expanded welfare, reduced dependence on foreign labour, the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), green industrialisation and fiscal sustainability.

Under capitalism, however, these goals are not automatically compatible. Rising wages and stronger welfare protections inevitably come into conflict with profit maximisation unless wealth and economic power themselves are redistributed.

Yet Bersama says remarkably little about organised labour. There is no serious proposal for stronger trade unions, worker participation in management, sectoral bargaining, workplace democracy or public ownership of strategic industries.

Instead, workers appear mainly as recipients of welfare rather than as democratic agents capable of reshaping the economy itself.

Most significantly, Bersama avoids the central question facing Malaysia today: how should the enormous concentration of wealth at the top be redistributed to finance universal social welfare for the majority?

Malaysia remains one of the few countries where wealth, inheritance, capital gains, luxury property ownership and speculative financial activity remain lightly taxed relative to the immense fortunes accumulated by corporate elites.

Instead of repeatedly burdening ordinary people through indirect taxation and subsidy cuts, a serious progressive alternative would impose steeply progressive wealth taxes on billionaires, monopolistic companies, luxury real estate and inherited fortunes.

Such redistribution is essential if Malaysia is serious about universal childcare, expanded healthcare, affordable housing, care for older people, support for people with disabilities, nutritious school meals and efficient public transport for low-income people and the working class. Universal childcare in particular should be understood not as charity but as a social right.

Working-class families, especially women, are trapped between rising costs and unpaid care burdens. A publicly funded childcare system would directly improve labour participation, reduce household stress and improve child development.

Yet Bersama speaks of welfare expansion without clearly explaining who will pay for it. Without wealth redistribution, welfare promises risk becoming fiscally hollow.

Similarly, Bersama’s emphasis on SMEs as the “backbone” of the economy overlooks the reality that many SMEs themselves rely on low wages, subcontracting, precarious labour and anti-union practices.

Expanding SMEs without strengthening labour protections merely broadens the social base of exploitation.

Its proposal to sharply reduce foreign labour also risks turning migrant workers into scapegoats for problems created by capital itself. Employers rely on vulnerable migrant labour because capitalism constantly seeks the cheapest and least organised workforce possible.

Without confronting employer power directly, policies targeting migrant workers risk dividing workers rather than uniting them across ethnic and national lines.

On environmental policy, Bersama’s ambition to make Malaysia the “battery of Southeast Asia” also deserves scrutiny. A green transition under private ownership can easily reproduce land dispossession, corporate monopolies and ecological exploitation under a new technological language.

Without democratic public ownership of energy systems, the green economy risks becoming simply another frontier for profit accumulation.

Ultimately, Bersama resembles many contemporary reformist movements globally: progressive in rhetoric, socially conscious and technocratically ambitious, but unwilling to confront capitalist ownership, racialised governance and entrenched class domination directly.

A genuine third force alternative would go much further: strong trade unions, democratic public ownership of strategic industries, wealth and inheritance taxes, universal welfare, worker participation in management, public housing expansion and, above all, a decisive transition away from ethnic-based distributive politics towards universal, class-based social justice.

Malaysia does not lack wealth. It lacks justice in how wealth and opportunity are distributed.

Nor does Malaysia lack talent – it has lost generations of it because too many people no longer believe the system treats them fairly.

The central political question is therefore not whether the elite can continue accumulating immense fortunes while offering limited welfare concessions, but whether society is prepared to redistribute wealth and power fundamentally in favour of the working majority across all ethnic communities.

Bersama’s programme may soften some excesses of neoliberalism, but it still leaves intact the deeper structures of wealth concentration, racial management and elite power that generated Malaysia’s inequalities in the first place.

Dr Kua Kia Soong is a former MP and director of Suaram.

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