COMMENT | It’s fairly obvious that Azmin Ali and his supporters have been hoping for him to be named Pakatan Harapan’s candidate for prime minister.

I confess to have somewhat enjoyed reading the response of Malaysiakini readers to this idea.

However, putting my personal feelings aside, it’s of course fair for any politician (and his/her supporters) to have ambitions for high office - it goes with the territory.

That said, I think we can say, with a fair amount of objectivity, that there are better ways to go about it, and there are worse ways to go about it.

The recent advocacy for Azmin that I found most eye-opening emerged quite recently, contained the following statement:

“If Azmin did not make this challenge, the general election would have been called a long time ago and Harapan would not have been prepared.

“Did anybody say thank you? Nope. Totally ungrateful! Until today, he is insulted and accused of not being a team player,”

One cannot help but notice the ‘totally ungrateful” part (I believe the original was “tiada terima kasih”).

Where have we heard this type of exhortation that the people should be ever so grateful to our high and noble politicians before?

Fortunately, lest we forget, we are provided by a timely reminder in the form of Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who soon after had his own similar exhortation:

“Past leaders should be appreciated as don’t think we are here today because of us. On the contrary, our presence is because past leaders don’t stab us from the front or back and the leaders who left the struggle.”

I’m not sure about everyone else, but I’m a little tired of being told how grateful we should be to our politicians - and of being told, no less, by those self-same politicians...