AUGUST 10 — Pakatan Harapan (PH) is facing one of those moments when politics can create an optical illusion.

A series of electoral difficulties can appear to be a national collapse. Political opponents naturally want PH to believe precisely that.

PH must not.

Malaysia is not merely Peninsular Malaysia. It is a federation whose political stability ultimately depends on three major geographical components: the Peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak.

As long as Sabah and Sarawak remain resistant to the politics of excessive religious and ethnic polarisation, the political future of Malaysia remains open.

This is why PH must not interpret its present difficulties as destiny.

Elections are snapshots. Political trends can reverse. Coalitions can be rebuilt. Governments can recover public confidence.

But parties that lose their nerve frequently make their temporary problems permanent.

PH cannot afford that mistake. Sabah and Sarawak combined have 56 parliamentary seats out of a total of 222. PH just need to go beyond 70 parliamentary seats.

The first lesson is simple: do not confuse electoral setbacks with ideological surrender.

The political momentum currently enjoyed by PH’s opponents does not mean that Malaysia has permanently shifted toward PAS or Perikatan Nasional (PN).

Nor does cooperation between PN and Barisan Nasional (BN) automatically mean that every Malaysian state will reproduce the same electoral outcome.

Sabah and Sarawak demonstrate why.

The political cultures of the two Borneo states are different from those prevailing in parts of Peninsular Malaysia. Their histories are different. Their demographic compositions are different.

Their understandings of federalism are different. Their political elites also remain deeply conscious of the safeguards, autonomy and constitutional arrangements associated with the formation of Malaysia in 1963.

This matters enormously.

Malaysia cannot be governed sustainably by winning an ideological contest in the Peninsula while alienating substantial parts of Sabah and Sarawak.

Any coalition aspiring to Putrajaya must understand this elementary federal reality.

PH must stop thinking like a defeated party

PH’s greatest danger now may not actually be PN, PAS or BN.

It may be demoralisation.

Once political parties convince themselves that defeat is inevitable, everything deteriorates simultaneously. Volunteers disappear.

Candidates become defensive. Ministers become hesitant. grassroots organisations lose energy. Internal quarrels become magnified. Every criticism becomes a crisis.

This is how political decline becomes self-fulfilling.

PH needs the opposite psychology.

It should examine its defeats ruthlessly without becoming paralysed by them.

Where candidates were rejected, ask why. Where turnout declined, understand why.

Where young voters moved elsewhere, engage them.

Where Malay voters distrust PH, go directly to them rather than discussing them from Kuala Lumpur.

Where Chinese and Indian voters are disappointed, listen instead of assuming that fear of PAS will automatically bring them back.

And where economic grievances are driving political anger, address the grievances rather than merely attacking the opposition.

The answer to electoral difficulty is better politics.

The economy remains the battlefield

PH must especially understand that many Malaysians do not wake up every morning thinking about coalition arithmetic.

They think about prices; wages; rent; petrol, electricity; food; school expenses and whether their children can find decent jobs.

A voter struggling economically does not necessarily vote according to the ideological categories political strategists assign to him or her.

Economic frustration can become a protest vote.

PH therefore has to reconnect reform with livelihood.

Institutional reform matters. Good governance matters. Fighting corruption matters. Parliamentary democracy matters.

But ordinary Malaysians must also feel that reform improves their lives.

Otherwise reform becomes an abstraction while opposition slogans become emotionally powerful.

Sabah and Sarawak change the equation

This is where the national picture becomes considerably more complicated than the narrative of an unstoppable wave.

Neither Sabah nor Sarawak is simply an extension of Peninsular politics.

Their political parties have their own calculations. Their leaders understand that the balance of power in Parliament gives East Malaysia extraordinary leverage.

They also know that excessive Peninsular polarisation can strengthen demands for greater autonomy rather than encourage political conformity.

PH should recognise this not as a weakness of Malaysia but as one of the Federation’s stabilising mechanisms.

Malaysia’s diversity creates political brakes.

A movement that becomes overwhelmingly dependent upon one ethnic constituency, one religious narrative or one geographical region eventually encounters structural limitations elsewhere.

This is precisely why the politics of moderation remains viable.

PH still needs BN

PH must therefore simultaneously maintain its relationship with BN.

This will be uncomfortable.

Politics frequently is.

BN possesses political networks in Malay constituencies that PH cannot easily replicate. PH, meanwhile, possesses substantial support among constituencies that BN cannot easily recover.

Sabah and Sarawak provide another component altogether.

Put these together and Malaysia still possesses the ingredients for a broad political centre.

Pull them apart and the country risks becoming divided into increasingly hardened political blocs.

PH should therefore stop viewing cooperation with BN as some embarrassing historical accident.

It is a strategic necessity produced by Malaysia’s fragmented electoral system.

But cooperation cannot mean complacency.

PH and BN must both improve.

PH cannot expect BN to rescue it from every difficult Malay constituency. BN cannot expect PH’s supporters to tolerate indefinitely a return to old political practices. Both coalitions must reform themselves while preserving enough common ground to govern.

PAS is not ten feet tall

PH must also avoid exaggerating PAS.

Treating PAS as electorally invincible merely strengthens PAS psychologically.

PAS has strengths: organisation, ideological commitment, grassroots networks and loyal supporters.

But it also has limitations.

The question is whether its political formula can command sufficient confidence across the extraordinary diversity of Malaysia — from Kelantan to Johor, from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching, and from Kota Kinabalu to the interior communities of Sabah and Sarawak.

Winning sections of Peninsular Malaysia is not synonymous with commanding Malaysia.

That distinction is fundamental.

A Malaysian government ultimately needs sufficient acceptance across regions, ethnicities, religions and economic classes.

This is a very high threshold.

Malaysia has not fallen

PH should consequently remove the language of despair from its political vocabulary.

Nothing has been predetermined.

Sabah has not fallen.

Sarawak has not failed too. The two comprise 64 percent of the landscape of Malaysia.

The Malaysian centre has not disappeared.

And millions of Malaysians who may be disappointed with PH have not necessarily become permanent supporters of PN, PAS or anyone else.

Voters move.

That is democracy.

PH’s task is to give them reasons to move again.

This requires humility rather than panic; organisation rather than slogans; economic delivery rather than excuses; and coalition management rather than ideological purity.

Most importantly, PH must remember what country it is attempting to govern.

Malaysia stretches from Perlis to Sabah and Sarawak.

The political map cannot therefore be read from Peninsular Malaysia alone.

As long as the Federation remains politically plural, the future remains contested.

PH may be wounded. It may have made mistakes. It may face an extraordinarily difficult road towards GE16.

But difficulty is not defeat.

When Sabah and Sarawak have not fallen, and when millions of Malaysians across the Peninsula remain politically persuadable, PH has every reason to continue fighting democratically for the political centre.

Giving up now would not merely be premature.

It would be the one defeat that PH inflicts entirely upon itself.

* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and a director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.