COMMENT | Professor Donald Horowitz, who has been visiting and observing Malaysia since the late 1960s, characterised Malaysia’s oppositions in 'Ethnic Groups in Conflict' as ‘flank’ groups attacking the ruling parties from the sides as PAS competed with Umno in terms of Islamic and Malay credentials while DAP and MCA/Gerakan/MIC competed on legitimacy among the non-Malays.

BN would continue to rule for as long as PAS and DAP find it impossible to form a joint frontal attack. The collective adversity suffered by DAP, PAS and civil society leaders in 1987 ironically planted the seed of opposition unity. In retrospect, Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s mass detention camp of 1987 had ‘united’ BN’s opponents and gave them a steely resolve to oppose like never before.

Lim Guan Eng, Mohamad Sabu and many others were young activists at a time when opposition parties and movements were fighting against BN for very different and often contradictory causes. But in Kamunting, whatever their causes, they were all behind bars with a common identity as Malaysians.

Being detained together for an extended period of time, they came to realise that BN benefited from mobilising racial and religious tensions to strike a blow against its political foes. The once elusive dream of forming a credible opposition coalition would finally come true after so many attempts.

The Socialist Front coalition fell apart by the mid-1960s amidst government crackdown and arrests. Internal crises also emerged when the Labour Party’s move to the extreme left at the prodding of their grassroots was escalated by the dispute between the two major parties over the issues of language and cultural identities. The Malaysian Solidarity Convention mooted by Lee Kuan Yew in 1965 was short-lived, disappearing from the political radar together with Singapore’s expulsion in the same year.

The opposition parties, particularly Gerakan, DAP and PPP reached a ...