Barisan Nasional

The National Front (Malay: Barisan Nasional; abbrev: BN) is a political coalition of Malaysia that was founded in 1973 as a coalition of centre-right and right-wing political parties to succeed the Alliance Party. It is the third largest political coalition with 30 seats in the Dewan Rakyat after Pakatan Harapan (PH) with 82 seats and Perikatan Nasional (PN) with 74 seats.

The Barisan Nasional coalition employs the same inter-communal governing model of its predecessor the Alliance Party but on a wider scale, with up to 14 communal political parties involved in the coalition at one point. It dominated Malaysian politics for over thirty years after it was founded, but since 2008 has faced stronger challenges from opposition parties, notably the Pakatan Rakyat and later the Pakatan Harapan (PH) alliances. Taken together with its predecessor Alliance, it had a combined period of rule of almost 61 years from 1957 to 2018, and was considered the longest ruling coalition party in the democratic world.

The Barisan Nasional coalition lost its hold of the parliament to PH for the first time in Malaysian history after the 2018 general election. It was also the first time Barisan Nasional became the opposition coalition, with former prime minister and Barisan Nasional chairman Mahathir Mohamad becoming PH's leader. As a result, the Sabah and Sarawak BN component parties left the coalition and formed their own coalitions in 2018 and 2022. In the aftermath of the 2020 Malaysian political crisis, together with four other parties, the Barisan Nasional coalition returned to power under a Perikatan Nasional-led government. However, it suffered its worst result in the 2022 election, falling to third behind Pakatan Harapan and Perikatan Nasional, but it stayed in government by supporting Pakatan Harapan.