COMMENT For some years now, Umno’s Saifuddin Abdullah had lifted anchor and floated intriguingly in the political spaces that were once inhabited by the liberals of his party.

Broadly, those liberals could be described as politicians who would not allow their racial identity to overshadow their Malaysian one.

It was a tough balancing act and there weren’t many who could bring it off but that some of them could did sustain the hope that such a type was possible - and what’s more - viable.