Barisan Nasional (BN; English: National Front) is a political coalition in Malaysia. It was founded in 1974 as a coalition of centre-right and right-wing ethnic political parties to succeed the Alliance Party, and had first competed in the general election that year. It is currently the third largest political coalition with 30 seats in the Dewan Rakyat, the lower house of the Parliament of Malaysia, after Pakatan Harapan (PH) with 82 seats and Perikatan Nasional (PN) with 74 seats. The coalition is dominated by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), as well as more minor parties such as the United Sabah People's Party (PBRS) and the People's Progressive Party (PPP), the latter of which has no representation in the Dewan Rakyat.
BN employs the same inter-communal governing model as its predecessor but on a significantly larger scale. In the aftermath of the 13 May incident, the coalition expanded its reach to absorb former opposition parties, eventually growing to include as many as 14 communal political parties at its peak. BN would almost single-handedly dominate Malaysian politics with a supermajority for about 34 years after it was founded. Taken together with its predecessor, it had a combined period of rule over six decades from 1955 to 2018, and was considered the longest uninterrupted ruling political coalition among liberal democracies.
Beginning in 2008, the coalition faced stronger challenges from opposition coalitions, notably the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in 2013 and later the Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliances. BN eventually lost its hold of the Dewan Rakyat to PH for the first time in Malaysian history after 2018 and became the opposition coalition instead. Consequently, the Sabah and Sarawak component parties of BN left the coalition and formed their own coalitions in 2018 and 2022. In the aftermath of the 2020–2022 Malaysian political crisis, BN returned to power under a Perikatan Nasional (PN)–led government. However, it suffered its worst result in the 2022 general election, falling to third behind PH and PN respectively, but it has stayed in government by supporting its former rival coalition PH under a national unity government, informally known as the Madani.
Barisan Nasional is the direct successor to the three-party Alliance coalition formed by United Malays National Organisation, Malaysian Chinese Association, and Malaysian Indian Congress. It was founded in the aftermath of the 1969 general election and the 13 May riots. The Alliance Party lost ground in the 1969 election to the opposition parties, in particular the two newly formed parties, Democratic Action Party and Gerakan, as well as Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party. Although the Alliance won a majority of seats, it gained less than half the popular vote, and the resulting tension between different communities led to the May 13 riots and the declaration of a state of emergency. After the Malaysian Parliament reconvened in 1971, negotiations to form a new alliance began with parties such as Gerakan and People's Progressive Party, both of which joined the Alliance in 1972, quickly followed by Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) in 1973.
Barisan Nasional, which included regional parties from Sabah and Sarawak (Sabah Alliance Party, Sarawak United Peoples' Party, Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu), was formally registered in June 1974 as a coalition of nine parties. It contested the 1974 general election as a grand coalition under the leadership of the prime minister Tun Abdul Razak, which it won with considerable success.
In 1977, PAS was expelled from Barisan Nasional following a revolt by PAS within the Kelantan state legislature against the chief minister appointed by the federal government. Barisan Nasional nevertheless won the 1978 general election convincingly, and it continued to dominate Malaysian politics in the 1980s and 1990s despite some losses in state elections, such as the loss of Kelantan to PAS, and Sabah to United Sabah Party which later joined Barisan Nasional.
By 2003, Barisan Nasional had grown to a coalition formed of more than a dozen communal parties. It performed particularly well in the 2004 general election, winning 198 out of 219 seats.
Although Barisan Nasional never achieved more than 67% of the popular vote in elections from 1974 to 2008, it maintained the consecutive two-thirds majority of seats in this period in the Dewan Rakyat until the 2008 election, benefitting from Malaysia's first-past-the-post voting system.
In the 2008 general election, Barisan Nasional lost more than one-third of the parliamentary seats to Pakatan Rakyat, a loose alliance of opposition parties. This marked Barisan's first failure to secure a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament since 1969. Five state governments, namely Selangor, Kelantan, Penang, Perak and Kedah fell to Pakatan Rakyat. Perak however was later returned via a court ruling following a constitutional crisis. Since 2008, the coalition has seen its non-Malay component parties greatly diminished in the peninsula.
The losses continued in the 2013 general election, and it recorded its worst election result at the time. BN regained Kedah but lost several more seats in Parliament along with the popular vote to Pakatan. Despite winning only 47% of the popular vote, it managed to gain 60% of the 222 parliamentary seats, thereby retaining control of the parliament. The 1MDB scandal, which erupted in 2015, further damaged BN's reputation.
During the 2018 general election, Barisan Nasional lost control of the parliament to Pakatan Harapan, winning a total of only 79 parliamentary seats. The crushing defeat ended their 61-year rule of the country, taken together with its predecessor (Alliance), and this paved the way for the first change of government in Malaysian history. The coalition won only 34% of the popular vote amid vote split of Islamic Party. In addition to their failure in regaining the Penang, Selangor and Kelantan state governments, six state governments, namely Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Perak, Kedah and Sabah fell to Pakatan Harapan and WARISAN (Sabah). The Terengganu state government also fell but to the Gagasan Sejahtera. Barisan Nasional was only in power in three states: namely Perlis, Pahang and Sarawak.
Many of BN's component parties left the coalition following its humiliating defeat at the 2018 general election, reducing its number to 4 compared to 13 before the election. These parties either aligned themselves with the new Pakatan Harapan federal government, formed a new state-based pact or remained independent. They include three Sabah-based parties (UPKO, PBS and LDP), four Sarawak-based parties (PBB, SUPP, PRS and PDP, which formed a new state-based pact GPS), myPPP (under Kayveas faction) and Gerakan. myPPP experienced a leadership dispute, with Maglin announcing that the party remained within the coalition and Kayveas announcing that the party had left the coalition, resulting in the dissolution of the party on 14 January 2019.
Among the remaining four component parties in Barisan Nasional, UMNO's parliamentary seats have reduced from 54 to 38 since 16 members of parliament left the party, while MCA's parliamentary seat maintains one. MIC's parliamentary seats have reduced from two to one after the Election Court nullified the results of the election for the Cameron Highlands federal constituency due to bribery, but BN regained its seat from a direct member under the 2019 by-election.
As a result of these developments, BN's parliamentary seats have reduced to 41, compared with 79 seats that BN won in the general election.
MCA and MIC made a statement in March 2019 that they want to "move on" and find a new alliance following disputes with the secretary-general, Nazri Abdul Aziz. Mohamad Hasan, the acting BN chairman, chaired a Supreme Council meeting in which all parties showed no consensus on dissolving the coalition.