COMMENT Two months ago, Ambiga Sreenavasan called on all stakeholders to rise above politics and join hands to deal with urgent issues confronting the nation.

                                                                                   

This was immediately echoed by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang, who suggested some form of national conciliation to save Malaysia.

 

The move however failed to gain traction.

 

Last week, Lim offered to work with Dr Mahathir Mohamad to 'rescue' the country as both ruling and opposition coalitions are stuck in their respective quagmires.

 

Some observers believed that the DAP veteran's olive branch to his decades-long nemesis is a show of desperation.

 

Pakatan Rakyat is in shambles with the hudud agenda pushed by PAS threatening to destroy the fragile coalition of strange bedfellows.

 

PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim, who was the glue holding the three opposition parties together, has since been put behind bars.

 

The situation recently took a turn for the worse and perhaps Lim is concerned that this could affect the votes in the next general election.

 

With gerrymandering to continue and the hudud crisis picking up steam, many in the Pakatan ranks are wondering if the opposition coalition could maintain its current haul of seats, let alone seize federal power.

                                                           

Worse still, some are wondering if Pakatan will hold together until the next national polls.

 

But Lim's proposal did not go down well with even his party members such as Ramkarpal Singh, who described it as a recipe for disaster.

 

Mahathir too had panned the possibility of such a move, declaring that he will not work with the opposition.

 

Wishful thinking

 

Since he launched his tirade against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, the former prime minister has been consistent on one thing - he wants to save Umno.

 

Given this, it is mind boggling that Lim would even consider that Mahathir - who has been an Umno man all his life - would work with, of all parties, DAP.

 

Such a move will be anathema to Mahathir.

 

In his latest blog posting, Mahathir once again reaffirmed his 'Umnoness' by reiterating how Najib had turned his back on the bumiputera to win over the non-Malays.

 

On the same note, former law minister Zaid Ibrahim's suggestion that Mahathir team up with arch-nemesis Anwar is at best a political fairy tale.

 

When Mahathir sacked Anwar, who was then deputy prime minister, in 1998, the former premier had plunged Umno into a major imbroglio, from which it is still struggling to recover.

 

That move altered Malaysia’s political landscape and laid the foundation for the opposition to make massive inroads in the last two general elections.

 

And now Zaid expects Mahathir to embrace Anwar and let bygones be bygones? This is just wishful thinking.

 

Furthermore, by working with Mahathir, Anwar would be seen as a traitor. After all, he had started his Reformasi movement with the aim of saving Malaysia from Mahathir.

 

While politics is the art of the impossible, a leopard however does not change its spots.