The Sabah state elections have sent a shockwave through Malaysian politics – but they offer no way out for the working class of East Malaysia.
Held on 29 November 2025, the vote was a decisive rebuke to peninsula-based parties, in what had been called a “must-win” election for Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) won 29 seats and Parti Warisan won 25 seats, taking a combined 50.94% of the popular vote and marking a new balance of power with Sabah-based parties now dominating the political terrain.
The establishment has consistently attempted to dismiss and minimise the angry and increasingly radical national movements in Sabah and Sarawak, movements that have shown gathering strength since Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) formed a ruling coalition after the 2018 general election around a “Sarawak First” agenda. Naturally, the prospect of a united Sabahan-Sarawak bloc pressing for further autonomy and a larger share of oil and gas revenues is a serious concern for the West Malaysian ruling class. The Sabah state elections make it impossible to ignore East Malaysian national demands.
But what is the material basis for this regional turn? It is not accidental or merely cultural. Politicians and commentators routinely explain discontent as a question of identity or “regional pride”, treating it as an emotional or parochial reaction. In reality, decades of extraction and neglect have produced deep grievances in Borneo. East Malaysia has been treated as an internal colony. Malaysian capitalists invest only the bare minimum to extract raw materials – timber, minerals, oil and gas – while hospitals, universities and roads are left to decay. East Malaysians are often left without clean drinking water thanks to rampant profit-seeking.
This pattern, and the endless corruption scandals have produced profound anger across society, now manifesting as regionalist slogans promising a “fair share”. Further still, this crisis of exploitation has spilled over onto Sabah’s streets. Throughout 2025, students at Universiti Malaysia Sabah mobilised around the prolonged water supply crisis and anti-corruption demands, with protests and government reprisals turning their campus into the focal point of wider discontent. This was followed by the public outcry after the suspicious death of 13-year-old Zara Qairina Mahathir, which similarly ignited mass anger and demonstrations on a scale never before seen in East Malaysia. Events quickly extended beyond these immediate issues, striking at the rot in Malaysian politics. The election results must be read alongside these mobilisations and public unrest – not as a completion of a process, but a manifestation of the underlying mood that will continue to intensify as these issues fester..
“Sabah for Sabahans” may be the rallying cry of the moment, but however justified it is as a protest against neglect, it does not tackle the root cause of the misery that affects all Malaysians, and especially East Malaysians: capitalist exploitation. What is being offered is not a programme that puts power in the hands of working Sabahans, but a renegotiation of who administers and benefits from exploitation. Both GRS and Warisan are dominated by long-standing political figures embedded in the shifting political and business alliances that have and continue to rule state politics. Chief Minister Hajiji Noor exemplifies this: a veteran of Sabah’s political establishment whose shifts between coalitions reflect the adaptability of local elites These establishment figures are beholden to capitalist exploiters of their own states who merely want a bigger slice of the pie, not the workers and youth of East Malaysia who actually create the wealth. They are all bark and no bite.
The anger in Sabah, expressed in the elections and on the streets, shows that people are ready for change. However, it is the struggle for better living conditions that will show the East Malaysian working class that capitalist politicians of all colours cannot and will not give them what they want. The only strength they can rely on is their own. Such a struggle can only succeed with a revolutionary programme that strikes directly at the exploitation that makes life a misery for so many – a programme encompassing land reform, local control of resources, and democratic workers’ management of key industries – can break the power of the capitalists, whether East or West Malaysian. This means building an all-Malaysian revolutionary party of the workers and students which can take power into its own hands, and fighting for a Workers’ Sabah and a Workers’ Malaysia
Photo: Bernama
