The Malaysian Budget for 2018 is the last prior to the upcoming general election, which the UMNO-led federal government has confirmed will be held within 180 days. As such, the budget represents the government’s last opportunity to demonstrate to the electorate how it intends to address the bread-and-butter issues that are topmost concerns for a sizeable portion of the Malaysian population.

Given this objective, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s self-declared “mother of all budgets” has been loaded with vote-getting goodies. This has the potential to help the incumbent government win votes, though how well it fares will depend on a variety factors.

… Saleena Saleem is an Associate Research Fellow and Amalina Anuar a Student Research Assistant at the Malaysia Programme, at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.