PAKATAN Harapan chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad played an important role in ensuring that allocations for federal seats in the peninsula were sealed after only less than four months of talks, said DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke.

Compared with previous elections, this is the first time the opposition coalition is able to finalise negotiations for 165 parliamentary seats so efficiently, he said.

The former prime minister’s leadership style of ensuring that every meeting ends with a decision is key to keep things moving on, said Loke.

“Tun Dr Mahathir is very disciplined. First, he is very punctual and the meetings always start on time.

“Second, he allows everyone to voice their opinions. He never stops anyone from speaking. He listens to everyone.

“But more importantly, he would say ‘I can listen to you for five hours but after five hours, I must have a decision, every meeting, there must be a decision, and after that we must implement the decision,” Loke told The Malaysian Insight.

“In the 13th general election (GE13), we couldn’t arrive on a consensus on a lot of important decisions. The three parties were not on the same page. This is one of the reasons Pakatan Rakyat failed.”

PAS, DAP and PKR were part of the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat (PR) pact.

He recalled PR could not agree on the prime minister candidate even on the nomination day of GE13 as PAS objected to naming Anwar Ibrahim on the grounds that they could not convince their supporters to rally behind the former deputy prime minister.

“I remember before the elections, there was a meeting where the pact almost broke up… even Anwar didn’t want to chair the meeting.

“PAS wanted their own prime minister candidate and would not agree to Anwar as the prime minister. We spent a lot of time meeting but there was no decision. Everyone was exhausted.”

Loke acknowledged that there are quarters within PH who are unhappy with the decisions made at the pact’s convention, but said the opposition is united with a clear direction moving forward.

Its machinery can get to work to explain to voters who will be the prime minister, which party will contest where and what policies will PH champion.

He said this will create the right momentum leading into the elections.

“You look at (state-owned media) TV3, Utusun Malaysia – they are all attacking the old man (Dr Mahathir),” he said, referring to media coverage of PH’s announcement.

“This proves that what we did was right and that Umno is panicking now.” – January 10, 2018.