“The manifesto was written not by plucking figures and facts from the sky... We had a laborious eight-month (period) of contestation of ideas on how to come about a manifesto that was pragmatic, practical and could be implemented.”

– Rais Hussin, Bersatu strategist

COMMENT | By pointing out that the Harapan manifesto is not worth the paper it is printed on, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has signalled that Pakatan Harapan cannot be trusted with anything it says on the campaign trail.

He has spat on the faces of people who voted for Harapan in the last election and demonstrated yet again that the people who voted for the “lesser of two evils” are the punchline of the joke that is mainstream Malaysian politics.

Is the Harapan manifesto worthless? Surely there must have been Harapan political operatives who did believe in the manifesto and did not just say things because they believed they could not win.

Was that really the strategy? Make a bunch of stuff up and then if victory was miraculously achieved, claim that they could not fulfil those promises? Moving forward, how can people ever trust anything Harapan officials say when it comes to policy...