COMMENT The good news is that Pakatan Rakyat is not going to break up; the bad news is that its lesser lights will continue taking shots at coalition partners.

 

The former reality is owed the opposition coalition's certainty that if it separates it will amount to little; the latter reality is the result of strains stemming from the latitude enjoyed by the opinionated in the digital age.

 

The one reality is due to realistic acceptance of the prerequisite for political change in Malaysia: reform can only come from a combined push by all the forces, however fractious, ranged against Umno-BN.

 

They realise that separately fought-for change will take ages to arrive, if at all. They know people want change sooner than later.

 

The other reality, with its disuniting tendencies, is the result of the downside of digital democracy: even the ill-informed and the obtuse are entitled to opinions.     

 

After what was highly erratic leadership by a Pakatan principal during the Selangor menteri besar crisis, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang reasserted at his party's muktamar a fortnight ago that the Islamic party would stay with Pakatan.

 

He had always held that PAS would persist with Pakatan so long as Islam and the Malays were not endangered.

 

His reiteration of the decision to continue to be with Pakatan - ironically, after a performance that raised serious doubts about his stature as an Islamic and Malay leader - was no piece of wisdom; it was more hardheaded acceptance of reality.

 

PAS would shrivel to a shell of its old sectarian self without Pakatan. As part of the Pakatan coalition, it has a chance to rise to more than just the sum of its modest parts. 

 

Barely a week after Hadi's announcement of PAS's continuance with Pakatan, voters in the Pengkalan Kubor by-election confirmed what many have long surmised: after the retirement of iconic Nik Aziz Nik Mat as menteri besar, the PAS hold on Kelantan - 24 years long this month - is set to wane.

 

PAS's take of the overall vote lagged behind BN's by a margin sufficient enough to make a statewide victory by BN in the next general election a distinct possibility. Alas, the vote-winning charisma of Nik Aziz is not inheritable.  

 

As that reality sinks in, not only would there not be a rise in agitation from within PAS to depart Pakatan, there likely would be no haste in seeing to it that hudud is introduced in Kelantan.

Pressure from the Kelantan chapter of PAS to introduce hudud law in the state, an effort that commenced months after last year's general election and is at variance with the Pakatan manifesto for the polls that did not include syariah as a plank, was what caused disuniting strains within the opposition coalition.

 

It’s wobbling but intact

 

True, divisive tendencies in the coalition arose from lurches elements within PAS periodically made, over the last six years of Pakatan's fledgling existence, for unity with common adversary, Umno, and from conflicting stands of the party on the Allah issue.

 

But these were fissures arising from differing opinions within the coalition not grave enough to engender fragmentation.

 

The notion that each component needed the other two for their collective well-being and that dismemberment would redound to the individual party's disadvantage vis-a-vis opposition-favouring voters - latterly welling up to BN dislodging proportions - keeps querulous elements within the Pakatan fold from pushing for separation.

 

The Pakatan components' performance in successive general elections, in 2008 and 2013, has bolstered the view that a united Pakatan amounts to more than the sum of its individual parts.

 

That view has taken hold within the coalition and has spawned stronger currents for the parties staying together than for drifting apart.

 

No doubt, the nine-month long crisis over PKR's decision to replace their menteri besar for Selangor has exposed the fissures in Pakatan more than the any other issue has done. Yet, the coalition has not sundered; it is wobbling but intact.

 

Credit that to the realism that the process of democratic replenishment and refurbishment makes imperative whenever there are coalitions competing for the right to govern.

 

After having taken 52 percent of the popular vote at the last general election, none of the Pakatan components feel bold enough to go it alone because each knows the value of the other two.

 

That confers on them the Hegelian notion of freedom which the German philosopher defined as the knowledge of one's necessity.

 

The knowledge that the Pakatan components must stay - however shakily - together or amount to piddling individual presences on the political landscape imposes its own special kind of glue.

 

All that remains now is for its realists to evolve the protocols for disagreeing among themselves agreeably - privately and publicly.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.