COMMENT For the nascent Pakatan Harapan to escape the shadow of Pakatan Rakyat's failure, it needs to stop playing its ubiquitous 'agreeing to disagree' game.

Not only must these words be taken out of their vocabulary, it must also be taken out from their political practice in its entirety.

For it is a dangerous, if slow-acting poison.

Or else, only doom awaits the Harapan phoenix aiming to rise from the ashes of the former coalition.

As rightly pointed out by political analyst Bridget Welsh, “Giving Malaysians a meaningful electoral alternative will not happen until Harapan works to fulfil its name, to move beyond the past, to sort out its present and outline a clear future.”

She wrote these words in her analysis of the fledgling opposition pact as they gathered on Jan 9 to iron out the common policy framework for their latest iteration, identifying the weaknesses that threatens to rip the new coalition apart even before it truly begins.

But the root cause of all these problems as pointed out by Welsh - be it the legacy of the past, the current uncertainties of the present or the inability to outline a clear purpose and leadership line-up for the future - is Pakatan's propensity to 'agree to disagree'.

Or to put it more bluntly, the pact's inability to come up with clear decisions. Something that Harapan seems to be inheriting by all accounts.

It is because they can never decide on important issues that they have legacy problems. Which is why they will never have a truly unified platform to fight on beyond defeating BN.

Every time they 'agree to disagree' on something, they are actually avoiding making a decision, creating ticking time-bombs just waiting to blow up.

This very reason was how the old Pakatan disintegrated, as their policy of 'agreeing to disagree' on various important national issues became spectres that returned to haunt them rather badly.

Same old trap

Case in point? The Islamic state and Allah issue which in no small part was instrumental in imploding the opposition pact.

It particularly fuelled the PAS vs DAP dynamic when the pact refused to come out with a real stand on the matter, beyond 'agreeing to disagree'.

It is also because they can't agree on which leaders to represent them that they end up ruled by committee and with only shadow committees as opposed to a true shadow cabinet.

Worse still, it debilitated them by having to depend on jailed former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim as the figurehead and a stand-by safe choice.

As much as he is a valuable rallying figure (as Welsh also pointed out) he no longer represents an effective leadership option.

Thus, as long as Harapan continues in this old Pakatan mould in again 'agreeing to disagree', they will continue to fall into this same old trap.

They should sit down and really iron out their official stand on major issues, and they must be brave enough to name new leaders and agree on the new line-up.

It will be a painful process, but it will pay off in the long run as they will avoid the pitfalls of the old Pakatan.

For their sake, and for the sake of all Malaysians looking for a viable alternative, we better hope that Harapan will stop 'agreeing to disagree' and just agree on something.

HAZLAN ZAKARIA is a member of the Malaysiakini team.