Parti Keadilan’s share of the aggregate vote at general elections has been in decline since the 2013 general election, where the party gained 20.39 percent of the aggregate vote. During the 2022 general election PKR won only 15.74 percent of the aggregate vote. The ailing UMNO gained 100,000 more votes than PKR, obtaining 16.43 percent of the aggregate vote.

PKR’s numerical vote has only gone up by some 180,000 since 2013, not even keeping up with the growth in registered voters over the last decade. Support for PKR is continuing to decline. If current trends continue, PKR may be lucky to hold 20 seats in the new parliament after GE16.

Developing greater support for PKR is a real problem, that few are willing to even talk about. There is a possibility that PKR could fall apart after the Anwar Ibrahim era. No successors or future visons are being nurtured by the party. Future historians may easily be tempted to make the judgement that PKR was only designed as a platform to bring Anwar to power. This is already being said about BERSIH.

PKR’s traditional support base has been disappointed two times now. First between 2018-2020, and secondly under Anwar in 2022. Supporters are seeing that PKR has turned out not to be the reformist party it was made out to be, and even worse, PKR is really a race-based party, rather than a multiracial........

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