With the newt-like metamorphosis of Anwar Ibrahim's Parti Keadilan Rakyat encumbering the Pakatan Rakyat's grab for power, Lim Guan Eng's hunch that the ground is no longer the same is a correct one.

Guan Eng had said replacing Najib Tun Razak at the helm would not be easy.

PKR is breaking down. The recent crossover to Umno of the PKR Lunas assemblyman in Kedah and the recalcitrant Port Klang assemblyman in Selangor are obvious symptoms of the newt reaching maturity and must return to the mud and slush for it to spawn a fresh batch of larvae.

Guan Eng must have known there wasn't and hasn't been much in the PKR. It is mostly about Anwar, his secretaries and a few NGOs close to him. Most of the rest were picked from the streets without any character assessment.

Now a Kedah state executive councillor who is the assemblyman for Lunas has said he has lost confidence in Anwar Ibrahim who is again facing a charge for sodomy.

What's left for the PKR to use as a foundation to acquire public confidence is a mystery. After more than a year of coaching, most of the party's state executive and district councillors are said to be ineffective or utter dead wood.

The PKR, which may have started out well in Selangor with former Guthrie CEO, Khalid Ibrahim leading the state government, is now looking frothy and fat.

The DAP too may be staring into space in Selangor where the MACC investigations and the Selcat interrogations might reveal more graft-stubs and fund pilfering than previously suspected.

In the Islamic landscape the Pas has run berserk with the party's Selangor state commissioner, Hassan Ali, wishing to form mosque-based moral squads to nab beer from the shelves in Muslim-majority areas.

When the powers-that-be decided to slam six Shah Alam demonstrators with sedition for parading a cow's head and then stepping and spitting on it, the PKR quickly distanced itself from the deemed sacrilegious act to appease their members who are Hindus.

What is the policy position of PKR concerning these bewildering developments involving beer and cattle? Anwar must elucidate or the whole of the Reformasi will have to be disregarded as merely a political sop and hence, in Islam, as short-changing the people and therefore fraudulent.