Barisan Nasional

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.