COMMENT | I have lots of stories to tell about the coup a year ago. But I will leave that to another day. What I want to do today is to explain why I remain an optimist.

If we use the United States' recent history, one can playfully equate the Obama presidency with the Pakatan Harapan government; the Perikatan Nasional period with the Trump administration. Some levels of sanity shall return when a Biden coalition comes back to helm the nation.

Of course, things could go very wrong and worsen. For instance, say Muhyiddin Yassin found out that his coalition would be doomed in a general election, he may want to prolong the emergency forever. If so, we may look more like Myanmar than we ever want to.

But on the other hand, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.

We must first answer the question - was the 2018 win a fluke or structural?