"The headlines screamed at him as soon as he saw the paper. He almost screamed back."

- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal.

COMMENT | My pick for the top news stories this year is a little different. Instead of five news stories, I am honing on three narratives and two news items.

The three narratives I am focusing on are not new. What is new is that it points to the virulence of a system that Pakatan Harapan is incapable – for various reasons – of dismantling. These narratives confirm that the new Malaysia Kool-Aid is just as dangerous as the Kool-Aid Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin said BN was imbibing when they lost the last general election.

What we will be dealing with in 2020 is the collective failure of Harapan to establish a counter-narrative to the Umno/PAS narrative of racial and religious supremacy.

The reality is that Umno and PAS play the game better because they do not have to worry about the expectations of a base which was promised a new dawn in racial and religious dynamics.

PSM president Mohd Nasir Hisham is correct when he claimed that the agenda of Harapan seems to be creating superficial differences with the previous regime.

The problem with this strategy is that eventually the base will either slip into apathy about the political process or revert to what they know instead of dealing with cynical pleas to emotion.

Here are the three narratives and two news stories...