Malaysia in 2023: Reconsolidation under Pressure.

Prime minister Anwar Ibrahim steered his cobbled-together government through economic and sociocultural challenges in 2023, emerging stable but spooked. State-level elections in August sustained each party's roster of states, but with declining margins for Anwar's coalition. Fiscal pressures--high debt, declining revenues, rising cost of living, and a persistently weak currency--constrained room for maneuver, while state-level and societal cultural contests tested Malaysia's multiracial, multireligious tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]