COMMENT | The speculation that Bersatu chair Dr Mahathir Mohamad will be a candidate for opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan in the fast approaching 14th General Election (GE14) comes as no surprise.

In retrospect, the ease with which he gravitated to the No 1 position in the fledgling coalition would be startling only to those reluctant to credit steady purpose backed up by tenacity as factors explaining his success.

Few in Harapan's leadership cohort would dispute that their nonagenarian numero uno is the most industrious man in the coalition.

Several are belatedly aware that all that hard work is in the service of a steadiness of purpose which its author is not keen to expose prematurely, but who will instead allow to grow on the collective consciousness – like Japanese pellets that blossom into flowers after having lain under the surface of a cup of water.

A skilled deployer of Machiavellian courtcraft knows the value of surprise in keeping the attention of friend and foe alike fixed on the next move. A little disassembling helps in the achievement of that surprise.

That is how Mahathir went steadily and deliberately from being the convenor of the Citizens' Declaration in March last year against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's alleged misrule, to leader of a four-party opposition coalition in July this year ranged against BN's evident misgovernance.

Talk of a step-by-deliberate-step metamorphosis, Mahathir's gravitation from conjuror of a motley bunch of oppositionists to the commander of a broad-based insurgency looks now, in the light of what has happened in the last 16 months, like a textbook illustration of how matters like these are choreographed.

In the initial phase of this journey, Mahathir toyed with the notion of being a candidate in the general election. It helped that people found it hard to believe a nonagenarian would want to submit to the rigours of a general election campaign.

But when it became clear he could chair four-hour plus meetings of the presidential council of Harapan with ease and assiduity, and speak on the stump for one-and-a-half-hours without so much as stopping for a water break, all expectations that GE14 would be an intolerable grind began to dissipate.

Also, in the event of a Harapan victory in GE14, the initial expectation that Mahathir would just confine himself to being an adviser to the new government has steadily altered to encompass a meatier role.

This snowballing has come on the coattails of an expenditure of time and energy on the nitty gritty of coalition-welding, accompanied with regular appearances on the ceramah circuit, that would leave Harapan party leaders over than two decades younger short of breath.

Now, when the notion of Mahathir being a candidate in GE14 is no longer an improbability, speculation on where he will stand has swirled around safer propositions, like the familiar stomping ground of Kubang Pasu, or his pet interest when prime minister, Langkawi. But this underestimates his taste for derring-do.

Given he has said he would never rejoin Umno, wouldn't a gambit like contesting for Johor Baru – the birthplace of the party in 1946 – be ideal? Especially for someone who wants his party to assume the role of dominant partner in the Harapan coalition vying to supplant BN at the federal level.

Two planned campaign forays to the southern state capital on Sept 22 and 29, combined with earlier sorties on a seat bearing great historical significance to Umno do hint at a dramatic thrust for the symbolic prize.

Looks like longstanding Johor Baru incumbent Shahrir Samad will not be allowed to retire as he wishes, which should add a settling of scores between two long-time antagonists to the already high stakes riding on this hypothetical battle royale.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.