COMMENT Reports about the imminence of Pakatan Rakyat’s demise due to policy and, latterly, personality feuds among its components are like what American humourist Mark Twain quipped in reacting to news of his death: he said these were “greatly exaggerated”.
 
For a year now, the opposition coalition has been wracked with acrimonious disagreement over issues such as the need to and – if so – who should replace Khalid Ibrahim as Selangor Menteri Besar, followed by clashes over the Kelantan wing of PAS’ plan to introduce hudud law in the state, and, most recently, the proposal to hold local council elections in Pakatan-ruled states.
 
The grouping appears awash in frightful ideological differences and personality clashes.
 
The surprise is that after a year of intense and continuing disagreements, the coalition, while not seeming to cohere in a manner that inspires public confidence, has not actually come apart.
 
There are predictions aplenty of the coalition disintegrating at the seams, but thus far, these have been just that – prognostications of doom rather than actual depictions of reality. 
 
Two of the three components, DAP and PAS, have demanded of the other with whom it clashed on policy to leave the coalition if it could not abide by pre-agreed terms. 
 
This is remarkable in that the dissenter in a policy dispute is usually the one who opts to leave if it feels unable to go along.
 
United by a common adversary
 
But in the case of Pakatan, the dissenter feels it is the lone ranger that should opt out while the latter proceeds to think that it should not ship out but stay put.
 
This peculiarity only confirms that dissenters don’t think it is wise to quit the coalition even if its dissent is a major disagreement on a planned move by a partner in the coalition.
 
This can only be due to the reality that all three components – PKR, DAP and PAS – are united by the overarching objective of displacing Umno-BN at the levers of federal power.
 
Each doesn’t think and has never before thought that this can be accomplished alone by itself: they will have to do it together or not at all.
 
Somehow there is the sense that quitting or going it alone has an aura of irresponsibility clinging to it, coupled with the fear that dismayed opposition-supporting voters would be apt to punish the soloist in future polls.
 
All these perceptions and fears impose a roughshod unity on the coalition’s components.
 
They are united by what they collectively despise in the common adversary than they are divided by what they individually dislike, perhaps even abhor, about each other.  
 
This unity is stronger than the divisions that wrack the coalition from time to time, over such issues of which powerful malcontent in a component should be replaced and what to do when major policy differences arise, either precipitately or gradually.
 
The year of living acrimoniusly
 
What the past year of acrimony in Pakatan has proven is that which unites the coalition in the common objective of supplanting Umno-BN at the federal level is greater than that which divides it periodically, in a host of personality and policy differences.
 
This and the evident success of the Pakatan-ruled governments in Penang and Selangor is the ballast that will keep the coalition afloat, even when it bobs and weaves like cork in stormy waters caused by serious policy differences.
 
Also, the sense of a majority choice coalescing among the Malaysian electorate on the need for a change in government at the federal level helps to keep the squabbles that arise in perspective.
 
Pakatan will have to acclimatise to a new rhetoric of disagreement to handle policy differences that periodically arise.
 
What will assist in keeping these disharmonies from rending the coalition is a new maturity with respect to the language used to convey, in public, policy disagreements.
 
Caustic language should be avoided at all times, and a willingness to disagree agreeably ought to be de rigueur.
 
Other and deeper facets of cooperation between the components should be invoked and proactive planning attempted.
 
In short, Pakatan should develop what the poet John Keats described as “negative capability” – the ability to work constructively despite doubts and ambiguities.
 
In other words, Pakatan should regard its provident unity as a work in progress, requiring artistic creation more than humdrum skills.


TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.