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Malaysia's Government, Prime Minister Face Make-or-Break Budget Vote

Zsombor Peter

   KUALA LUMPUR - Lawmakers in Malaysia are due to decide the fate of the
   country's biggest-ever budget bill as soon as Thursday in what's likely
   to be a tight vote that could topple Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin's
   teetering government and trigger snap elections.

   The country's constitutional monarch, Al-Sultan Abdullah, appointed
   Muhyiddin prime minister in late February after a sudden shift in
   political alliances brought down the government of Mahathir Mohamad.

   Since then, Muhyiddin's ruling coalition has survived by the slimmest
   of margins with just 113 members in the 222-seat lower house of
   parliament. It won a vote to oust the speaker of the house in July by a
   mere 111 votes to 109.

   'Unprecedented'

   That coalition is looking brittle. The largest party in the pact, the
   United Malays National Organization, has been grumbling about having to
   take a back seat to Muhyiddin's smaller party, Bersatu, and a few of
   its heavyweights have wavered in their support for the 2021 budget. The
   opposition has also been heckling Muhyiddin's government from the start
   as lacking popular support for having sidestepped the ballot box.

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