Is Nurul Izzah Anwar a modern Joan of Arc come to rescue a hopelessly jaded polity?

We will begin to find out from tomorrow when, as observers expect, she accepts nominations to contest the post of deputy president of PKR.

At 30, Nurul is too young to be projected as having the talent for leadership and the capacity for organisation to rise to the deputy presidency of a party with pretensions to take federal power as first among equals in the Pakatan Rakyat coalition.

But after the tectonic shifts to the political landscape wrought by the tsunami of March 2008, all bets are off on what is possible and what's not in Malaysian politics...