“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”

- 34th president of the US, Dwight D Eisenhower

COMMENT | To put it bluntly, nobody can rejuvenate PKR except Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and he does not seem to think his party has lost its way or that the anchor of Pakatan Harapan - which was supposed to be PKR - has become an albatross around its neck.

Of course, PKR needs Malay support. But what do the folks who vote for Perikatan Nasional want? Here is the thing, if you cannot give voters what they want, for whatever reason, you have to make them believe what they need is really what they want.

People who vote PN know exactly what they are getting. And political operatives who claim the religious and racial narrative of the Green Wave is simplistic are missing the point. So too the folks who claim that a Borneo bloc is needed to create a federal government.

PN aims to create a hegemonic religious homeland in the peninsula, state by state, before making deals to ensure hegemony on a federal level and a degree of autonomy for the time being in Sabah and Sarawak.

PKR used to proclaim it was the kind of realpolitik multiracial party needed to maintain Malay establishment politics and a kind of new deal for the urban electorate.

This of course was easier...