COMMENT Now that DAP has obtained the tacit backing of Amanah, PKR is the only Pakatan Harapan component that is holding out against the execution of what would be an act of political narcissism: Lim Guan Eng's move to hold snap polls in Penang.

The central leadership council of PKR meets tonight to decide either to sustain their doubts about the wisdom of the move or to come round to backing it.

The council would only make the decision after hearing from the three leaders of the party who last week went to Penang to air their doubts to DAP secretary general and Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.

It is not known if PKR deputy president Azmin Ali and its election directors Saifuddin Nasution and Nurul Izzah Anwar have shifted from their positions last week of doubting the wisdom of the DAP move to supporting it.

As a former British prime minister observed, a week is a long time in politics: the PKR trio would have canvassed opinion in their party that would have either fortified their doubts or moved them to alter their stance.

The opinions of the trio will be critical to shaping the final decision of the central leadership council which the party will take to the Harapan presidential council meeting that will be held later this week to determine what the coalition's stance on the matter would be.

PKR has been placed in an awkward corner after Guan Eng announced to a public gathering in Penang last night that Amanah had given its backing for the snap polls.

Amanah debated the proposition at its central working committee meeting last Sunday and did not come to a decision, with president Mohamad Sabu saying that it needed time for further discussion.

An executive council meeting the following day was similarly noncommital, but Guan Eng announced to the DAP-organised gathering in Penang last night that Amanah’s backing for snap polls was already in the bag.

Though Mat Sabu was present at the gathering, it was not him that disclosed Amanah’s acquiescence to the DAP move.

Guan Eng went ahead and announced the news, paying little heed to the PAS-stoked perception that Amanah is DAP’s stooge.

Now if PKR tonight comes round to agreeing to the DAP move, that will only fortify the perception DAP is the dominant voice in the coalition.

This will not help the DAP goal of gaining Malay support for itself in addition to deepening the community's doubts about Amanah as a respected partner within Harapan, and not anyone’s patsy.

Sources in Amanah say that the sense of two meetings the party held on this issue was that they should wait for the Harapan presidential council meeting to once again hear out the arguments for and against before abiding by the final decision.

In sum, Amanah is ambivalent which given the closeness of the bonds between Mat Sabu and Guan Eng translates into support for the DAP position.

PKR left as the last holdout

This leaves PKR as the last holdout against a snap polls.

With Guan Eng already having reminded PKR of his party’s reliability as a coalition partner in all the by-elections in recent years that PKR either forced and had inflicted on them by Umno, the stage is set for PKR to be either the bad sport by holding back or grateful reciprocator of past DAP favours.

Thus PKR is caught between churlish refusal and embarrassing acquiescence.

The party’s worries about the effect of three-cornered fights - certain to happen now that PAS is determined to field candidates - in the seats it won in Penang by slender margins in the 2013 general election (GE13) will be countered by DAP’s argument that PAS is going to be disruptive is any case; whether now or later, at GE14 would make little difference.

Other arguments against a snap poll such as voter fatigue with politics, anticipated low voter turnout as tends to happen in polls other than the general elections, and opposition supporters’ dismay at three-cornered contests - all these will be brushed aside by a DAP in thrall to the party's of stance that its beleaguered secretary-general must be defended.

But the one argument that DAP cannot swat away is that this is an exercise in political narcissism undertaken in the vacuous hope that victory will somehow vindicate Guan Eng against the corruption charges preferred against him.

That nobody within DAP seems able to tell him that this position is emblematic of party’s lack of intellection and self-scrutiny is appalling.

It is now left to PKR to do the telling, that you don't risk a coalition for the sake of an individual, not one who has been eight years - that qualifies as two terms - in the CM’s office and has been three terms - which is the party’s constitutional limit - in its secretary-general's post.

Especially not when he was naive enough, before opponents who constantly bay for his blood, to buy property at below market value.

His travail is self-inflicted. The balm for that is not a snap election but the best legal counsel a legion of sympathisers can help him engage.

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.