Last weekend, Umno and archrivals PKR were eyeball-to-eyeball and both sides just blinked – and thereby lost a good opportunity to get ahead in the perception game.

If politics is also about perception, the rivals let slip a grand chance to decisively foist the ‘Lost it’ tag on the other in the battle to show voters which party ought to be trusted with Malaysia’s future.

Umno was under pressure from Perkasa...