NIK Nazmi Nik Ahmad was stumped towards the end of an hour-long interview after breezing through all the questions thrown at him.

The PKR Youth chief confidently explained how Pakatan Harapan was going to counter Barisan Nasional’s TN50 initiative or how he measured up to BN Youth’s popular Khairy Jamaluddin.

But when it came to describing working with nemesis-turned ally Dr Mahathir Mohamad, his words were sparing.

His history as a reformasi activist and a former aide to jailed former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim made it hard for him to say that he has moved on and that he could now work with Dr Mahathir.

This difficulty reflects the giant leap of faith that true-blooded reformasi activists like him have had to make over the past several months for the sake of bolstering the opposition to defeat the BN in GE14.

After a painful divorce from long-time partner PAS, Pakatan Harapan parties PKR, DAP and Amanah have had to put behind years of bad blood to work with Dr Mahathir and other former Umno politicians who now lead Bersatu.

“It has not been easy. I can only imagine how it’s been for Anwar, his family and all those who suffered worse,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

Nik Nazmi was active in the pro-reformasi “Mahasiswa lawan Mahathir” (university students against Dr Mahathir) movement in 2001.

He became Anwar’s first full time aide in 2006, when the politician began to restart his career after being released from prison in 2004.

But even then, Dr Mahathir, a BN supporter and mentor to Najib, continued to publicly attack Anwar, PKR and the opposition.

Dr Mahathir’s animosity towards Anwar and the rest of the opposition only stopped when he formed Bersatu in August last year and announced that it would join PH.

Now that Dr Mahathir is part of the PH, Nik Nazmi and others like him have been forced to accept a former nemesis as an indispensable ally.

In the interview with The Malaysian Insight, Nik Nazmi talks about the process of reconciling his activist roots with the fact that he now has to work with Dr Mahathir.

And whether in the end, dyed-in-the-wool opposition politicians like him can trust that Dr Mahathir will do the right thing if they all come to federal power.

Below are excerpts of the interview:

Q: How does it feel to be an activist against Dr Mahathir and now a Selangor lawmaker for Mahathir?

A: Correction, a Selangor lawmaker working with Mahathir. That is the past and we are facing a bigger fight against Najib now.

Q: You’ve worked with Anwar since 2006 and you saw first-hand the stuff this regime has done to him. How does it feel to work with the guy who started it all, who did it all?

A: I’ve been public with this. It hasn’t been easy; I can only imagine what it’s been like for Anwar, his family and those who suffered worse. But Anwar himself teaches us we have this fight against Najib now and we need to focus on this bigger thing and Mahathir is fighting the regime. And I think that Najib has done enormous damage to the country. We need to be able to move forward.

Q: I can see this depth of feeling that goes into answering this question. The fact that you are having so much trouble answering compared to all the other questions I’ve thrown at you suggests that you may not have convinced yourself to move on. Is that right?

A: No, I have. To be honest I have seen Tun speak and I think he is sincere in fighting Najib.

Q: Can you trust Dr Mahathir?

A: I think he is quite sincere in his disappointment with Najib. I don’t doubt that. He has a sense that Najib has destroyed the country and his legacy. So I think that desire to change Najib’s regime is very real with Tun.

Q: Dr Mahathir says that he wants to end Najib’s regime, but do you believe he wants reform?

A: Bersatu needs us and we need Bersatu. So if the focus for them is about removing Najib and fighting corruption and for us it’s about institutional reform then we have to get it together to achieve both these objectives. One cannot come without the other. – June 3, 2017.