COMMENT Criticism that the newly-formed opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan, has had a forced gestation and that the infant is premature and needs life - meaning ideological - sustenance misses the point.

Pakatan Harapan’s predecessor, Pakatan Rakyat, expired because of the Islamic supremacism of one of the opposition coalition’s components - PAS.

It was ideological differences between PAS and DAP that did in Pakatan Rakyat.

PAS’ insistence on hudud implementation in Kelantan went against the manifesto of Pakatan Rakyat, as conveyed in the Common Policy Framework (CPF) on which the combined opposition had fought the last general election,

Then PAS elected to cut ties to DAP, an action that effectively ended the life of the coalition, though PAS persisted in the belief that it did nothing to take itself out of Pakatan Rakyat. Another component, PKR, connived in this pretence.

PKR’s diplomacy vis-a-vis PAS consists in underestimating differences and overestimating similarities.

PKR forgets that similarities, or commonalities, do not entail common perspectives.

Like PKR, PAS fights for justice. But an Islamic sense of justice can be quite different to the concept from a liberal democratic perspective.

This was clearly demonstrated some years back in the case where the revered PAS leader and former menteri besar of Kelantan, Nik Aziz Nik Mat ( photo ), was queried about employment opportunities for women in his state government.

He said more women were indeed being employed by his government, but not the pretty ones whom he said would find it easier to obtain rich suitors in marriage to take care of them.

Women less well-endowed by nature would be privileged by his government in the employment stakes because they were less likely to be lucky in obtaining rich husbands.

Nik Aziz pronounced this approach to the issue of equal employment opportunities for women in his government as the epitome of justice.

From a liberal democratic perspective, this approach would be regarded as sexist and demeaning of women.

Ability to do the work would be the first criterion of suitability for employment, not looks and its lack. Also, the whole idea of providing equal employment opportunities for women is to obviate the need for them to depend on rich husbands.

An abundance of common perspectives

Common perspectives matter; an abundance of it among DAP, PKR and the newly-formed Parti Amanah Negara (PAN) is what led to Pakatan Harapan’s swift formation and evident cohesion.

The criticism that aside from agreeing to Anwar Ibrahim as prime minister-designate, Pakatan Harapan has not drawn up a common programme for espousal to and endorsement by the public takes the view that the coalition is a new product that must first go through a gestation period and a formal coming-out party.

No such formalities are required, unless of course one is prepared to regard all that campaigning, much of it done by Anwar between 2008, when the opposition coalition first denied the ruling BN its traditional supermajority in Parliament, and 2013, when that denial was sustained, as so much water under the bridge.

It was not so. All that effort was the labor pains of a new and better country that Pakatan Rakyat campaigned for under the CPF.

That those ideals still resound in the national political arena, particularly those parts inhabited by a majority of the opposition parties, is the reason behind Pakatan Harapan’s swift parturition and disregard of the birthing formalities.

Plenty of time was wasted last year when the now defunct Pakatan Rakyat skirmished among themselves over whether Khalid Ibrahim should be replaced as Selangor menteri besar and if so, by whom.

PAS, and to a lesser extent, PKR, were the chief aggravators of the controversy.

After that, it was the turn of PAS to drive another nail into Pakatan Rakyat’s coffin by insisting on hudud implementation in Kelantan.

With that acrimony as background, Pakatan Harapan’s swift get-go is actually a reaction to the self-inflicted Pakatan Rakyat crises of 2014 and early 2015.

The party that was the chief cause of the miscues of the recent past is out of the way.

That explains the speed with which the other entities within the opposition fold have cohered so quickly around a new combination and taken off without much ado.

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.