In Malaysia, a proposed electoral alliance among Barisan Nasional, Perikatan Nasional, and PAS presents itself as Malay-Muslim unity, but an academic voice cautions that what appears as solidarity may in fact be a fragile truce among parties with competing constitutions, disputed leaderships, and unresolved claims to authority. History reminds us that the arithmetic of winning power and the architecture of exercising it are rarely the same thing. A nation as plural as Malaysia cannot anchor its constitutional coherence to the consolidation of a single community — and the attempt to do so risks