Zaim Mohzani
Rafizi Ramli and Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad are building Bersama, formally Parti Bersama Malaysia, as a political start-up.
That is why, within days of opening membership registration, the party already had more than 18,000 members. That was my biggest takeaway from last Friday’s Yang Berhenti Malaysia (YBM) event.
Most of the commentary so far has focused on whether Bersama can win seats in the coming general election.
Rafizi Ramli himself has called it a kamikaze mission and openly said they are taking the long view towards the general election after that.
Fine. But people are still analysing Bersama like a normal Malaysian political party when the whole point is that it may not be one.
Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said at the event that Bersama wants to operate more like a start-up than a traditional party.
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That sounds abstract until you realise what they are actually trying to dismantle.
The start-up logic
Most parties in Malaysia are built from the bottom up. Branch chiefs accumulate loyalists. Division heads become mini-warlords. Candidate selection then turns into negotiations between factions, patrons and local strongmen.
In this system, seniority matters more than competence. Local machinery matters more than policy capability.
Bersama appears to want the opposite: a flatter structure coordinated digitally through an app, where the central leadership exerts stronger control over divisions and candidate selection. Instead of waiting years to climb party ladders, candidates will reportedly be able to register their interest directly.
Meritocracy and competence are supposed to matter more than local faction-building. This sounds a lot like Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP).
The logic is straightforward. The best local operator is not always the best MP candidate. Some people are excellent at mobilising members but poor at policy, governance or public communication.
Bersama appears to want candidates who can credibly function as lawmakers and shadow ministers from day one: technocrats, professionals, policy people, and younger operators who would never survive the old patronage ladder.
But unlike the PAP, there is one major difference. Candidates are expected to be announced early and given time to sink roots in their constituencies before the election. So this is not a pure parachute model either.
This is not Muda
The comparison to the Muda party does not really hold. Muda was youth-coded from the beginning. Its political energy skewed heavily towards Gen Z urbanites (digital-native youngsters, aged about 14–29) and activist spaces.
Bersama feels very different. The numbers tell the story. Bersama is dominated by Gen Y, mortgage-paying millennials, aged about 30–45 (41%) and Gen X, established mid-career adults, aged about 46–61 (36%). Boomers, the post-war older generation, about 62–80, make up 16%. Gen Z is only 7%.
So that is not a youth protest movement. That is Middle Malaysia, to borrow DAP strategist Liew Chin Tong’s framing. They are mortgage-paying adults, professionals, civil servants and knowledge workers. They are parents worried about wages, housing, childcare and institutional decline.
The geography points the same way. Shah Alam, Hulu Langat, Bangi – these are middle-class ethnic Malay seats that PKR has held or contested for years. These areas are not Pas territory nor student activist enclaves.
The middle lane
The ethnic composition is more interesting.
Rafizi has revealed that PKR itself is roughly 50% ethnic Malay and 30% Indian, with less than 10% Chinese membership.
That is politically significant because PKR’s public image has always been that of a broad multiracial reformist party.
Bersama appears to be trying to correct that imbalance from the start. As of 22 May, the party had reportedly already attracted 18,000 members: 62% Malays, 15% Chinese, 14% Indians, 4% Muslim bumiputra from Sabah and Sarawak, 3% non-Muslim bumiputra from Sabah and Sarawak, and 2% others.
A reformist party in Malaysia cannot survive if Malays see it as “anti-Malay”.
But it also cannot become nationally important if the ethnic minorities see it as just another Malay party with token diversity.
Bersama appears to be trying to occupy that very narrow middle lane.
Where the recruits come from
The recruitment data is equally revealing. Some 46% are fence-sitters with no prior party background. Of those who came from existing parties, PKR accounts for 29%, followed by Umno (6.3%), Pas (2.9%), Amanah (2.5%), Bersatu (2.5%), Muda (2.5%) and DAP (1.3%).
That tells us two things.
First, this is not just another PKR splinter. Bersama is activating politically disengaged moderates who had mentally checked out from party politics altogether.
Second, the Malay pull is real. Roughly 15% of former members came from explicitly Malay parties. That validates Rafizi’s core thesis: there is still a market for moderate, reformist Malay politics outside Perikatan Nasional and Umno.
Why going solo makes sense
The “go solo” strategy is also being misunderstood. Rafizi does not seriously seem to believe Bersama is marching into Putrajaya in the coming general election. Going solo may actually be about leverage more than power.
In a fragmented Parliament, even 15 to 25 MPs can become kingmakers –enough to shape coalitions, pressure governments and force movement on institutional reforms and economic policy.
The play here is long-term bargaining power. Putrajaya can wait.
And if that is the strategy, the long view towards the election after that suddenly makes much more sense.
What to watch
None of this guarantees Bersama will succeed. Malaysian politics has chewed up plenty of reformist projects that started with strong moral framing and ended in coalition compromises or quiet absorption.
The structural ambition may be high and the numbers may be encouraging – but execution is a different matter.
The real test comes later: the first time the central leadership overrules a popular local figure on a candidate; the first time the app’s logic conflicts with member preference; the first time a deal in Parliament demands a compromise on one of their stated founding principles.
What Bersama does in those moments will tell us more than any early membership figure ever can.
For now, the more honest reading is the structural one. This is an experiment in how a Malaysian party can be built. Whether it works is a separate question.
The experiment itself deserves to be taken seriously, on its own terms, rather than measured against a template it is openly trying to discard.
Zaim Mohzani is an Aliran member who writes on Malaysian politics and policy. He is the senior director of external relations at KSI Strategic Institute for Asia Pacific (KSI), a regional public policy think tank in Malaysia. The views expressed here are his own.
The views expressed in Aliran's media statements and the NGO statements we have endorsed reflect Aliran's official stand. Views and opinions expressed in other pieces published here do not necessarily reflect Aliran's official position.
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