In practical political terms, the DAP's withdrawal from the Barisan Alternatif may not look like a bad idea, both for itself and for the opposition movement as a whole.

The party believes it lost its base of non-Malay, mainly Chinese support during the last general election because it was associated with PAS, a party dedicated to setting up an Islamic state if it comes into power nationally.

Its thinking is that the prospect of an Islamic state is such an anathema for non-Muslims that they abandoned DAP at the polls simply for its co-operation with PAS.

Thus, withdrawal from the BA would allow DAP to disassociate itself formally from PAS - yet allow the party, through some kind of electoral understanding, to help in the overall goal of unseating the BN at the next election.

Unfortunately, things may not turn out exactly like that. I am one of those who believe the real reason the non-Malays voted for the BN is the reason they have always done so - fear. The ruling party's thinly-veiled threats of racial violence if the opposition won once again carried the day for the BN.

While there may have been some misgivings about the Islamic state issue, it was essentially a fig leaf to provide some respectable cover for the non-Malay cowardice at the ballot box.

In any case, the whole PAS-DAP kerfuffle over the Islamic state issue has once again shown that the two parties are the yang to the BN's yin - relics of the pre-Anwar era who are headed towards irrelevancy (much like the Umno-led BN) unless they retool themselves for the new realities.

They are still playing the roles defined for them in the BN-created game. While it may not yet be obvious, and may not be for sometime, the game itself has changed.

True, PAS seems to be on the ascendancy after forming an unprecedented two state governments after the last election, and may well stand a good chance of winning power nationally. But that will be a short-lived victory unless it modifies its rigid stand and take the country's multiracial realities into consideration.

Rigidity may also prove to be the DAP's undoing. Instead of recoiling in horror from the prospect of an Islamic state, the party should have opened its mind a bit more and accommodate a spirit of compromise, especially at this fragile moment in Malaysia's history.

The one party that is the real alternative to the discredited political system still hanging on in Malaysia is Keadilan. The party's principles and goals are truly faithful to what this country is really about and what it was envisaged to be by the founding forebears.

It deserves, and hopefully will get, much more support at the ballot box the next time around.