Does DAP trust Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who betrayed Umno which defended him for more than two decades right before their eyes, without reservations after only a year of collaborating?

Of course not! This is according to former elected representatives council (Mubarak) president Abd Aziz Abdul Rahman.

The situation, he added, was similar to jailed former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who has now joined hands with Mahathir.

“Do you think Anwar can forgive Mahathir who destroyed his political career so easily? Forget what Tun (Mahathir) did to him and his family?” he told Umno Online.

Accusing DAP's Lim Kit Siang, Mahathir and Anwar of “staging a charade with the highest standards of hypocrisy”, he claimed that the three would turn on each other once power is attained.

“We know that the three of them are political animals. They would do anything for power... The three of term practise Machiavellian politics for their personal political survival.

“They do care about the means as long as the aim to topple BN and attain power is achieved,” he added.

Therefore, Abd Aziz advised the people not to fall for the “acting” of the three veteran politicians. He also claimed that Pakatan Harapan is not a stable coalition.

“We can see that Harapan is not a stable political coalition and is unable to resolve its own internal problems.

“There is no 'wow' factor in the states governed by the opposition, except for continuing with the development projects crafted by the previous BN governments.

“So don't place your trust to administer this nation or states in an unstable and weak coalition.... because we would fall victim to their failure and weakness,” he added.

In a related development, Bloomberg quoted a former aide to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak as stating that the reconciliation between Mahathir and Anwar would not attract more support.

“I see it simply as a consolidation of existing support for the opposition,” said Oh Ei Sun.

Oh, who served as Najib's political secretary from 2009 to 2011, also hoped that Pakatan would be able coordinate its seat allocation to ensure straight fights with BN.

Harapan has trained its guns on the 1MDB scandal, pledged to reform laws and institutions related to the power of the prime minister and aims to limit premiers to two terms in power.

However, Oh believes that the election would be decided less by scandals and more by living cost issues for rural voters and the urban poor, who are dependent on the “largess of the incumbent government”.

"Perhaps they are more amenable to material attractions, simply because they are poor," he said.

Meanwhile, Sholto Byrnes, a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia, noted how political players of the past continue to remain relevant.

“If 20 years ago anyone had said that the prime minister and deputy prime minister from 1997 would still be offered as the top leaders in 2017, that would have been regarded as an outlandish prediction.

“That the opposition is relying on its former foes of 20 years ago shows a huge lack of confidence in their own ranks and strikes many Malaysians as a thoroughly bizarre spectacle,” he told Bloomberg.