AUGUST 13 — When 4,264 DAP delegates gather on Sunday to decide whether the party should remain in government posts for the remainder of the parliamentary term, they will be making a decision whose consequences extend far beyond DAP itself.
The temptation to withdraw is understandable. Pakatan Harapan has suffered serious electoral reversals, most recently in Negeri Sembilan, while DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke suffered his first electoral defeat in 22 years.
The pressure on PH to recover its reformist credibility and address bread-and-butter concerns is consequently intense.
Yet DAP should understand an uncomfortable strategic reality. Leaving government would not necessarily insulate it from attacks by Perikatan Nasional (PN), especially PAS.
It could achieve precisely the opposite. Why? PN and PAS’s appetite has already been whetted. That attacking DAP works.
After all, the attacks could become more intense precisely because the political utility of attacking DAP does not depend on whether DAP actually exercises substantial governmental power.
PN and PAS’s obsession with DAP depends on whether the latter can be transformed into a convenient political symbol of trying to supplant Malay Muslim Unity. Granted that the ruse is working, there is no reason for PN and PAS to stop, especially when they are hunting for an electoral pact with BN.
Indeed, the discourse surrounding “Malay-Muslim unity” has increasingly made DAP a central political antagonist. In turn, a key headache of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
The Negeri Sembilan campaign, for example, demonstrated how the Malay-Muslim unity narrative could be deployed alongside the growing electoral accommodation between BN and PN.
DAP’s departure from government would therefore not automatically remove the target. It could merely remove DAP’s shield.
First, being inside government gives DAP something that opposition politics cannot provide: administrative performance.
Ministers can point to policies, budgets, infrastructure, implementation and measurable outcomes.
Whatever the limitations imposed by coalition government, governmental responsibility allows a party to demonstrate that its political identity consists of more than responding to accusations.
Outside government, DAP would increasingly be forced into the politics of rebuttal.
Every accusation by PAS would demand another denial. Every allegation about DAP’s intentions would require another explanation.
Instead of governing and allowing administrative performance to speak alongside political rhetoric, DAP could find itself permanently defending what it allegedly represents.
That is dangerous because PAS does not necessarily need DAP to be powerful for the anti-DAP narrative to work. It merely needs DAP to remain politically useful as an adversary.
Second, DAP’s withdrawal could inadvertently strengthen the logic behind closer BN-PN electoral cooperation.
The emerging argument for such cooperation is straightforward: Malay votes should not be divided unnecessarily.
The recent Negeri Sembilan election demonstrated the potency of a Malay-unity narrative, while analysis of the Johor election similarly found significant movements between PN and BN among Malay voters.
Once politics is organised according to this logic, attacking DAP becomes useful political glue.
BN and PN do not possess identical histories, organisational cultures or political interests. PAS and Umno have competed against each other for decades. Bersatu introduces still another set of complications.
What can make cooperation easier is the construction of a common opponent.
DAP performs that function almost perfectly.
The more DAP is portrayed as a threat, the easier it becomes to explain why former competitors must cooperate. The argument shifts from ideological compatibility to political necessity: differences between Malay parties must supposedly be set aside because a larger adversary exists.
DAP withdrawing from government would not destroy this narrative.
PAS could simply modify it. To make PAS’s Anti DAP attacks even more vicious.
To be sure, DAP would no longer be accused of controlling the government from within. It could instead be accused of destabilising the government from outside, abandoning Malay-led partners, attempting to recover Chinese support, obstructing Malay-Muslim political consolidation or preparing to return to power after the next general election.
The accusation changes. The political target survives.
Third, leaving government could deprive DAP of the very institutional platforms from which it can demonstrate that the caricature constructed around it is false.
Cabinet membership forces DAP to operate within Malaysia’s constitutional monarchy, federal institutions, civil service and multiracial coalition politics. These constraints are sometimes frustrating.
Yet they are also evidence that Malaysia cannot simply be controlled by one political party.
DAP ministers are accountable to the Cabinet, Parliament, the Prime Minister, the law and ultimately the electorate.
The claim that DAP somehow possesses overwhelming power therefore becomes considerably harder to sustain when Malaysians can observe the actual limitations under which its ministers operate.
Outside government, however, political imagination can replace administrative reality.
PAS would be free to describe what DAP supposedly intends to do rather than what DAP ministers are actually doing.
Fourth, withdrawal risks making DAP increasingly dependent on its safest electoral constituencies.
The defeat of Anthony Loke in Chennah is especially important precisely because his political career had demonstrated the possibility of crossing ethnic electoral boundaries.
His defeat should therefore encourage DAP to deepen its multiracial engagement rather than retreat from national governance.
A DAP that withdraws into predominantly urban constituencies would make PAS’s argument easier, not harder.
The party would risk being portrayed increasingly as sectional even if its policies remained national.
Fifth, DAP must recognise that the struggle ahead is not simply between parties. It concerns the architecture of Malaysia’s next political alignment.
If BN and PN move towards stronger electoral understandings, PAS will have every incentive to keep DAP politically salient.
The stronger the alleged DAP threat becomes, the stronger the rhetorical justification for Malay-Muslim electoral consolidation.
This creates a potentially self-reinforcing cycle.
Attack DAP. Use the attacks to justify Malay-Muslim unity. Use Malay-Muslim unity to justify closer BN-PN cooperation. Then use the resulting cooperation to intensify the argument that DAP must be prevented from returning to influence.
DAP should therefore be exceedingly careful about believing that leaving government removes it from PAS’s political crosshairs.
It does not.
Indeed, the opposite could happen.
DAP would surrender ministerial platforms, lose opportunities to demonstrate administrative competence and become more vulnerable to being defined by its opponents.
The 4,264 delegates therefore face something considerably larger than a referendum on government positions.
They must decide whether political frustration should be answered through withdrawal or through better performance.
Staying in government does not guarantee DAP’s recovery.
It must still address public dissatisfaction, restore reform momentum and demonstrate why participation in government materially improves Malaysian lives.
But withdrawal contains a strategic paradox.
DAP may leave government hoping to escape the political costs of incumbency, only to discover that PAS needs an opposition DAP even more than it needs a governing DAP.
For a Hadi-led PAS seeking to sustain the momentum of Malay-Muslim political consolidation and deepen an electoral understanding with BN, DAP remains an extraordinarily useful adversary.
DAP cannot prevent PAS from attacking it.
But it can decide whether those attacks are answered merely with words — or with the demonstrable record of governing Malaysia.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies, and 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.
