Bersatu and Pas’s break up is long overdue

Malaysia-Today:

Bersatu and Pas’s break up is long overdue

Nov 29, 2024


Muhyiddin’s strength lies in preserving the status quo. Preserving the status quo is a worthwhile skill only when your team is winning and doing well. If your team is losing or doing badly, what is the point of having a leader who can only be counted on to preserve your ability to lose and do badly?

Nehru Sathiamoorthy


A lot of people are predicting that Perikatan Nasional is on the verge of breaking up , and I for one believe that the prediction is 100 percent true.

At the end of the day, reality stands on truth, not illusions. We can create an illusion as a stand-in for the truth for a while, but unless we quickly create the condition that will allow a new truth to arise and replace the illusion, the illusion alone cannot be expected to hold up a non-existent reality forever.

The truth is that the one that leads must be better than the one that follows. The truth is also that if you need me more than I need you, I should be the one that is on top, not you.


If the one that leads is worse than the one that follows, or if the one that needs the other more that the other needs it is the one that is on top, you can cover up this abnormality with the illusion that all is fine and well for a while, but at some point, the one that leads must measure up and become better than the one that follows and the one that needs you more than you need them must transform themselves to become someone that you need more than they need you, or else the entire farce will fall apart.

Pas is better than Bersatu in every which way. Bersatu also needs Pas more than Pas needs Bersatu.

There are a bunch of reasons as to why PAS has allowed itself to be led by an obviously weaker Bersatu and why Pas is making it appear that it values Bersatu more than Bersatu is worth.

One of the main reasons is because PAS needs Bersatu to conquer Putrajaya. PAS is not unaware that as a regional party that only holds sway in the east and north of Semenanjung, it alone does not have what it takes to plant its flag in Putrajaya.

For its Putrajaya campaign, PAS needs Bersatu to make inroads in the central, southern and western portion of Semenanjung, as well as ally with the parties of Sabah and Sarawak, and it is to empower Bersatu to make these moves that Pas has allowed itself to be led by Bersatu and pretend like it values Bersatu more than Bersatu is worth.

Bersatu however, was expected to use the illusion that Pas created for it, in order to rise to the occasion, and actually became the party that Pas could count on to execute the campaign to conquer Putrajaya.


Unfortunately, however, it does not look like Bersatu will ever rise to the occasion.

Not only does Bersatu not look like it will be able to strengthen itself and execute the campaign to conquer Putrajaya, it is so hopeless, that it might actually cost Pas to lose what it had already won for PN.

As it is, Bersatu has already lost 6 of its MPs to Anwar.

It has also squandered the post-GE 15 momentum – called the Green Wave by many pundits – to the point that nothing really came out of the green wave, despite the fact that the green wave in the initial stages of GE 15, had the potency to sweep away PH from Putrajaya.

Bersatu however, has time and time again disappointed Pas, by not only losing the initiative no matter how many times it possessed it, but by also doing its dardenest to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at any given chance.

Bersatu, for a lack of words, is just lousy. It is lousy from its leadership to its management to probably even to its grassroots.


Muhyiddin is a bad leader, or at least a leader that is absolutely unsuitable for Perikatan in the state that it is in.

Perikatan needs a pemimpin yang berwibawa, who has the ability to create meaningful change.

On paper, Muhyiddin might look like he possesses wibawa, after playing a pivotal role to topple both the administration of Najib and Mahathir 2.0, but in reality, Muhyiddin is likely just a manager and a peacemaker, that is absolutely incapable of bringing about any change, whether meaningful or meaningless, to PN.

Muhyiddin’s strength lies in preserving the status quo. Preserving the status quo is a worthwhile skill only when your team is winning and doing well. If your team is losing or doing badly, what is the point of having a leader who can only be counted on to preserve your ability to lose and do badly?

Who cares about how well you are managing your team’s affairs, when all your party is doing is losing and sinking?

When you are lost and sinking, you need a captain that can rally the crew to turn things around and get the ship back on track, not a captain that is only capable of lulling you into peace and resignation as you continue to sink and lose.

Muhyiddin is simply incapable of understanding that “in order to dispose the soul to action, you must upset its equilibrium.”

When your team is losing, you need to agitate their spirit so that they will be motivated and energised to turn things around. If you have a leader like Muhyiddin who is intent on keeping the peace even when PN is facing setback after setback, not only will PN never win, it is going to lose forever.

If Muhyiddin himself is an unsuitable captain, his officers on deck are not helping Bersatu’s cause one bit.

PN is not a weak opposition. It is actually a very formidable opposition that has the potency to overthrow the government if the condition is right. Despite that, Bersatu’s officers on the deck are making little to no impression in the political landscape of the country. I can’t recall a single impactful thing that Hamzah Zainuddin has done despite being the opposition leader in the parliament. I can’t recall anything meaningful that Peja or Azmin Ali has done to win the hearts and minds of the people either.

The only person from the Bersatu stable that at least tried to make an impression in the political landscape of the country, was probably its ex-youth leader Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal. I am not saying that Wan Ahmad did a great job, but at least you should give him an A for effort. Bersatu however, did not even appreciate the one member of its upper management who at least tried to turn things around. Instead, in the recently concluded Bersatu election, it replaced Wan Ahmad with someone else while keeping the non-performing Muhyiddin, Hamzah, Peja and even Azmin in important roles, although Azmin did not even contest in the Bersatu election.

As for Bersatu’s crew, what an untrustworthy and traitorous lot that they turned out to be. As it is, 6 of Bersatu’s MPs, or nearly 20 percent of its lawmakers, have already stabbed Bersatu in the back by jumping ship and joining PMX Anwar’s crew. The crew in Bersatu is so treacherous, that in the last Nenggiri by-election, Pas had to force its own member to resign from Pas and join Bersatu, in order to find a reliable candidate from Bersatu to defend the Nenggiri seat. Despite Pas’s effort, Bersatu ended up losing the Nenggiri seat anyway.

Now that the rumour mills are suggesting that infighting is about to break out in the Bersatu camp, it is indeed time for Pas to ask itself just what the heck is it expecting to happen by carrying a deadbeat party like Bersatu in its journey forward.

How long is Pas going to pretend like it respects and values Bersatu, when Bersatu is not only not rising up to the occasion, it is constantly pulling Pas down, regardless of how much Pas tries to boost Bersatu up.

A deadbeat party like Bersatu is no joy to carry even when you are full of energy and travelling towards a place of joy and happiness, what more when you are already tired and likely headed to a place of defeat and loss.

It is about time that Pas wakes up, smell the coffee and resign itself to the fact that you can’t make a donkey into a gentleman just by dressing it up in a suit.

In fact, all you will get by trying to dress a donkey in a suit, is an ass with a delusion of standing.

If even at this stage, the leadership of Bersatu cannot accept that it doesn’t deserve to lead PN, and continue to insist that Muhyiddin remains as PN’s candidate for PM, the delusioning Bersatu might be too thick for Pas to ever penetrate.

At this stage, the only right and proper thing for Pas to do is stop investing in the illusion that Bersatu will someday be able to prove its worth, break up with Bersatu, and just resign itself to the truth, even if it causes it to be all alone.