COMMENT | Allow me the dubious honour of (probably) being the first writer ever to compare BN to Brad Pitt.

Looking at the Cameron Highlands results, I can’t help but think of this scene from Guy Ritchie's Snatch.

Brad Pitt’s character is beaten to bloody pulp, seemingly down for the count, and then… Well, I don’t want to spoil the movie for you.

Suffice it to say, it looks like vibrant political competition is far from dead in Malaysia.

Pakatan Harapan dealt BN a crushing blow in GE14, and soon faced BN again in no less than four by-elections in this last year, winning all convincingly – about as convincingly as they were beaten in Cameron Highlands yesterday.

I guess the honeymoon is over – it’s time to wake up and smell the Boh Tea.

Some will ascribe this victory to Umno and PAS’ driving home a hard ethno-religious line, and say that Malaysians are swinging back to the right.

I think ultimately, however, this element only succeeded because it filled a vacuum created by Harapan’s complacency.

'What good has Harapan done?'

In politics, perception is everything.

I’m vastly underqualified to give a thorough A to Z accounting and assessment of precisely how Harapan has performed as a government. I imagine it’s not too far from the "B+" given by Lembah Pantai MP Fahmi Fadzil...