COMMENT Last night saw Budget 2016 get passed with the opposition barely putting up a fight.

The opposition had 24 MPs in the House then, and didn't even bother calling for a bloc vote, giving up its last chance to boot out Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak by voting down the budget.

Top leaders such as Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, Azmin Ali, Lim Guan Eng and Abdul Hadi Awang were not even present.

This was in stark contrast to two weeks ago when Pakatan Harapan mobilised almost all its members in an attempt to vote down the budget at the policy stage.

And with Parliament session ending tomorrow, it looks like Wan Azizah's no-confidence motion against Najib won't see the light of day either.

Like it or not, it looks like the opposition has thrown in the towel on this fight.

One possibile reason is that it has realised that despite all its efforts so far, Najib cannot be taken down from the outside.

BN's interests come first

The opposition was hoping to get Umno leaders like former deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin, and Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah to join in its fight.

But while both men are seen to be anti-Najib, BN's interests still come first, with both Muhyiddin and Razaleigh voting in favour of Budget 2016 during the policy stage.

Add that to PAS' refusal to vote down the budget, and you can see why the Pakatan whips didn't rally the troops to vote down the budget.

Whether or not it was the right move to strengthen the people's confidence in the opposition is a different question altogether.

But with the budget now out of the way, Pakatan can focus on other important matters at hand.

This includes resolving Lim's spat with PKR in Penang, and figuring out how it is going to work with PAS in Selangor.

Maybe the Umno general assembly will see more fireworks than last night.