As two state elections approach, Malaysia's political landscape faces fragmentation as several nationalist parties compete for the critical Malay voter base.

For much of Malaysia’s post-independence history, Malay voters largely faced a binary choice: Umno, the oldest Malay nationalist political party that governed the country for more than six decades until 2018, or the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). But with two state elections fast approaching, a bevy of breakaway parties flying variations of the same nationalist flag are all chasing those same 13 million or so Malay votes. The newest entrant arrived on Saturday, when former home...