But little change occurred to rectify these new inequities in society between 1991 and the turn of the century. The response by Malaysian society to these new injustices was seen in electoral outcomes. In the 2004 general election, after Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi promised to create a country for all Malaysians, the Barisan Nasional coalition, led by his party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), secured an overwhelming victory. When Barisan Nasional fared badly in the 2008 general election, losing for the first time its two-thirds majority in parliament, the results were attributed to Abdullah’s failure to deliver on this pledge. Indeed, his successor as prime minister, Najib Razak, introduced in 2009 his primary slogan, ‘1Malaysia’, stressing a national—not ethnic—identity to usher in a new era of inclusiveness. For Najib, this meant that his government would be race-blind and that there would be no more affirmative action.
However, when Najib’s race-blind approach was questioned by powerful Bumiputera interests, ostensibly because this agenda would sideline their concerns, affirmative action was recast by Najib’s government as one that would be ‘market friendly’. This change did not help the government deal with the problems exposed by the 2008 global financial crisis, specifically the poor quality of technological development, the country’s high dependence on foreign capital to generate growth, and the ineffectiveness of big business to drive industrialization (Gomez, 2012). By the government’s own admission, there was in society a ‘bottom 40 per cent’, who were in ‘dire need’ of public assistance (NEAC, 2010). This bottom 40 per cent comprised about 12 million Malaysians.
A range of public assistance programmes was introduced targeting vulnerable groups, though most were short term. The most prominent of these was Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M, or One Malaysia People’s Assistance), a cash-transfer programme to support low-income individuals and families,
regardless of their ethnicity. BR1M was introduced in 2012, just before the 2013 general election, allowing the opposition to claim that cash transfers through BR1M attracted electoral support from members of the bottom 40 per cent, particularly those in rural constituencies. And indeed in the election, Barisan Nasional lost further significant support, with UMNO’s primary support base—rural Bumiputera-majority constituencies—helping the coalition to retain power. In 2016, Najib's government promulgated the Bumiputera Economic Community policy, another affirmative action–based measure, to enhance the support of the Bumiputera, including through entrepreneurial financing mechanisms and deepening equity and wealth ownership (EPU, 2016).
In the run-up to the 2018 general election, the Pakatan Harapan opposition pledged that policies would be needs-based and that unproductive government-business networks would be dismantled, so as to promote equitable development and redress social inequities. This may have appealed to the electorate because, in May 2018, Barisan Nasional unexpectedly lost power. For the first time since independence, Malaysia had a government not led by UMNO, with power shifting to Pakatan Harapan, a multi-party coalition led by former UMNO president and prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.