By all standards of definition and analysis, the opposition as a whole has lost badly in the just-concluded 11 ^th general election of Malaysia.

Of course, given the traditional and structural handicaps in a playing field that has never been level, not many reasonably informed people would expect the opposition to make additional gains over and above that of 1999, or even to preserve the gains it made in the previous poll.

Yet, from a strategic as well as operational perspective, the fact of an uneven playing field does not explain everything. Otherwise, how does the opposition explain the substantial gains it made in the 1999 polls, or even the relatively better outcome achieved by DAP in this polls?