COMMENT | What is wrong with Pakatan Harapan is that it does not know what kind of coalition it is. I have said this many times.

Umno/BN and PAS know exactly what they are.

How long the fracturing in the Malay establishment benefits Harapan remains to be seen - but this does not take away from the fact that Umno/BN and PAS know what they are and what they are selling to their bases.

For instance, Umno poohbah Ismail Sabri Yaakob announces that the government, because it cares for the “people”, paid RM1.5 million ringgit to the family of firefighter Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim.

When Harapan formed the federal government, de facto Law Minister Liew Vui Keong said this of the kidnapping of Indira Gandhi’s children: "This case, cannot really ask for the government to interfere because this is a litigation matter taken up by the mother against the ex-husband.”

Nobody in Harapan said anything when the Suhakam revealed that pastor Raymond Koh and social activist Amri Che Mat were kidnapped by the state security apparatus and when then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared the findings hearsay.

So it's no point lauding the money given to Adib's family and then throwing in Teoh Beng Hock's name when, while in government, you did absolutely nothing for Teoh's family and never did anything for the families Harapan used as propaganda before it got into Putrajaya.

Harapan has no idea what it stands for, but it gaslights people into thinking that they are something they are not. Dethroning Najib Abdul Razak was a once in a lifetime thing.

Elements in the Malay establishment wanted to get rid of Najib and they hooked up with Harapan to ensure this. This was not something that Harapan meticulously planned and executed and as such, this idea, that Harapan won some sort of major victory, is self-deluding.

Keep in mind that a majority of Malaysians did not reject the system, only that Umno, for a while, was crippled.

What does Harapan stand for?

What does Harapan stand for? I have asked many political operatives this and almost all of them acknowledge that the best Harapan can be is a less corrupt version of Umno/BN - and some sort of guard rails against an emerging theocratic state.

And even in this, they fail, with Mujahid Yusof Rawa, the religious czar of Harapan, attempting to out Islamise PAS and Harapan controlled states attempting to inject religion into the economic sectors and attempting to control free speech.

Now of course in public and in the service of the base, Harapan political operatives will blurt out all sorts of political bromides to ensure that their supporters have something to hang onto.

Why did Harapan fall? The answer is simple, Mahathir. Why didn’t Harapan carry out reforms? The answer is simple, Mahathir. Why have some Malays become more racist after GE14? Well according to Kim Quek, the answer is simple, Mahathir.

No doubt, Mahathir was a prime mover in the collapse of Harapan but the reality is that he was one man. For heaven's sake, he dared the Harapan council to sack him and sarcastically thanked Anwar Ibrahim when he said that there would not be a vote of no confidence against him.

As someone who endorsed him, I wrote a piece on why any sort of unity government, post-Sheraton Move, was well complete madness and we should be apologising for even giving Mahathir a second chance:

“Worried about Najib coming back? Why? We have voted in kleptocrats for decades and when we had the chance for something new, the elected prime minister said that the manifesto was not worth the paper it was printed on and his erstwhile allies just buried their heads in the sand.”

Malay vote

Harapan could have formulated policies and funded entitlement programmes which actually would have helped the dominant Malay polity - but it instead attempted to take over existing Umno programmes to maintain political hegemony and the result is that Umno still managed to make a comeback, with convicted political operatives leading the charge while embroiled in internal party feuds.

Not to mention cutting off vital subsidy programmes for disenfranchised Malay groups while claiming that these were cost-cutting measures.

Take the issue of race. Lim Guan Eng says that DAP never abandoned its principles to woo or appease the Malays. First of all, I have no idea what principles he is talking about.

Like many DAP political operatives, Guan Eng likes to blather on about Bangsa Malaysia, but then he outsources getting the Malay vote to PKR and Amanah.

Of course, there was also Mahathir who was supposed to get the rural Malay vote, while DAP was sure that they had the Chinese vote in the bag. Now the only people that this plays out with are DAP supporters, the rest of the country see this as hypocrisy it is.

Of course, very few political operatives in PKR and Amanah dispense this kool-aid because they understand on the ground reality of dealing with communities who do not understand this Bangsa Malaysia kool-aid or view it as an existential threat to their economic survival.

Remember when Lim Kit Siang said GE14 was probably the last battle for him, Mahathir and Anwar? Well, I guess nobody got the memo.

Anwar’s desperation to be prime minister has taken Harapan down roads that it should never have travelled in the first place. With Kit Siang's retirement, the Malay establishment has lost one of its whipping boys. They should be denied all of them.

After the disastrous outing with Mahathir, one would have thought that any kind of partnership with Umno would have been avoided like the plague, but Anwar continued to avail himself to anyone who would take his hand in the hopes of securing the throne.

How does this look to the demographic you are wooing? Weak, insecure political operatives hoping anyone will be their friend in their quest for power.

This also furthered the narrative that the DAP was willing to work with anyone, including those they demonised as racist and extremist to get political power. Now of course we have this big tent nonsense which just makes the situation even more bizarre.

Harapan did not need Mahathir to break Umno’s two-thirds majority and to capture economically viable states. They are sure as hell that they do not need the ketuanan establishment to hang on to power in those states.

Meanwhile, the states Umno/BN or PAS manage are mired in the kind of corruption that makes the lesser of two evils argument more viable.

PKR, DAP and Amanah do not need anyone else to attain federal power and the propaganda that it does merely sustains the system.

Now some folks would say it is too late for Harapan to figure out what it is. That they should have done this a long time ago.

I do not share that view. It is never too late to reform, reorganise and return to the fray.

The problem is that Harapan needs to take a hard look at itself and admit to mistakes and propaganda that did nothing to reform the system. In fact, it caused more problems.

They need a younger leadership that does not buy into this bangsa kool-aid nonsense but understands that racial and religious politics should be dealt with realistically and strategically, instead of attempting to gaslight Harapan supporters.

These young leaders should not be proxies to the old guard. And these young leaders need to have an agenda that the leadership in Harapan subscribes to.

What did Sun Tzu say? “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.