Is Bersama the new third force?

It 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.

From 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 Malaysians.

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 all Malaysians.

Yet Malaysia’s economy is not malfunctioning accidentally. It is functioning precisely as capitalism often functions: concentrating wealth upward 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 Malaysians 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 the distribution of wealth and opportunity.

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.

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, race-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.

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

Bersama therefore owes Malaysians a clear answer: does it intend to maintain race-based affirmative action indefinitely under a softer technocratic language, or is it prepared to advocate 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 racial categories that often benefit politically connected elites, a progressive alternative would direct resources toward the B40, working-class households, rural poor, Orang Asli communities, Sabah and Sarawak underdevelopment, and vulnerable Malaysians of every background.

Such a transition toward class-based universalism would not ignore historical inequalities. On the contrary, it would address them more honestly and effectively through social need rather than racial 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 contradiction is also visible in Bersama’s economic promises. The programme simultaneously pledges continuous GDP growth, higher wages, expanded welfare, reduced dependence on foreign labour, SME development, 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.

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 citizens through indirect taxation and subsidy cuts, a serious progressive alternative would impose steeply progressive wealth taxes on billionaires, monopolistic corporations, luxury real estate, and inherited fortunes.

Such redistribution is essential if Malaysia is serious about universal childcare, expanded healthcare, affordable housing, elderly care, disability support, nutritious school meals, and efficient public transport for the B40 and 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, anti-migrant policies 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 race-based distributive politics toward universal class-based social justice.

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

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.