Amid concerns of appointing former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad to helm the opposition coalition, several Pakatan Harapan leaders have assured that there are checks and balances to ensure that a Harapan-led government would not regress into an authoritarian regime.

DAP lawmaker Hannah Yeoh pointed out that three out of four Harapan component parties are not race-based, unlike the Umno-dominated BN.

“I think when you have race-based political parties, they actually don't care about the greater needs of Malaysians. That means that for MCA, as long as the Chinese in that circle are taken care of, they don't care what happens to the poor Malays, they don't care what happens to the poor Indians. Because they feel that you have other spokespeople.

“But in Harapan, we are multiracial parties. PKR, DAP and Amanah. We have poor Malays in our parties, we have poor Indians, we have poor Chinese. So I think the days of just having one party dictate to the rest of the (coalition) are over.

“DAP and PKR are not MCA and MIC. That will never happen,” she told a forum in Subang Jaya last night...