LETTER | As the country waits with bated breath over who will be the country's 10th prime minister, a popular narrative put out by Pakatan Harapan to up its chances is that the coalition won the most votes during GE15.

And going by that logic, its leader Anwar Ibrahim deserves to be the PM.

This thinking is deeply flawed. While it is true that of the 15,387,338 votes cast on Nov 19, a total of 5,874,719 went to Harapan, the remaining 9,611,619 went to non-Harapan coalitions and other candidates.

In other words, Harapan only obtained 38 percent of the support among Malaysians.

Put another way, 62 percent of the voters rejected Harapan and Anwar to be PM for whatever reasons.

A sizable majority of Malaysians do not want Harapan and Muda to be in Putrajaya or Anwar to be PM. Numbers do not lie.

If Malaysians had wanted Anwar to be PM, Harapan would have gotten more than 38 percent of the votes cast and won over 111 parliamentary seats.

But the converse is true, with 62 percent of voters opting not to have Anwar as the next PM.

The only reason why Harapan ended up with the highest votes of the three coalitions was due to the split between BN and Perikatan Nasional.

This is unlike GE14 when there were more straight fights between BN and Harapan.

From the onset, Harapan had positioned GE15 as a referendum on Anwar as PM10.

It attacked BN for being corrupt and only interested in saving people like Ahmad Zahid Hamidi from going to jail.

On the PN side, Harapan had vociferously attacked Muhyiddin Yassin as an incompetent "backdoor PM" and Abdul Hadi Awang as an extremist.

This is why Harapan had gone to town with the narrative that only Anwar, whose sodomy conviction is still being upheld by the Federal Court, can save the country and voters should back the coalition.

And going by the results of GE15, voters are not buying the narrative.

In fact, almost one in two of those who cast their votes rejected Harapan and Anwar as PM.

I hope Yang Di-Pertuan Agong can consider these when deciding on the next candidate to be the prime minister.

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