ACCORDING to DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke, Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) big-tent approach only extends to those within the opposition bloc.

However, this big tent is now shrinking, owing to the dwindling number of swing seats.

DAP and PKR used to take pride in calling their coalition PH a “big tent”, with room for a diversity of views. The embattled pact is now looking for a new vision to appeal to Malaysians.

Given the devastating Sheraton move, there is pressure to “purify” the leadership in each party and the opposition coalition by making sure it represents reliable party supporters and won’t face pressure to “sell out”.

As the tent shrinks, the distance between them gets bigger. And it gets harder to make deals.

After a string of losses in by- and state elections post-May 2018, previously united parties within PH are now battling each other, even as the opposition bloc fights the Umno-led Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

These contrasting behaviours reflect a simple fact – PH has continuously aimed to be a big-tent coalition while BN is a closed circle and becoming racially and religiously homogeneous.

For more than half a century, Umno-BN have purged dissenters and turned themselves into a rigid, radical, unified bloc – ideologically, racially and religiously. Whoever they cast out, PH took them in. PH is a coalition of many different elements while BN is much more unified.

Since its ouster from power, PH is no longer a big-tent enterprise – it has lost touch with a once solid bloc of urban working-class voters while courting rural voters.

As the educated joined these parties, taking a larger share of the leadership, these parties shifted the political focus to voters of higher socio-economic status, mirroring the educational and economic background of most of the leaders in these parties.

This drove the working-class away and pushed them into news bubbles with racial and religious issues, further stoking their distrust in PH.

The big tent got smaller.

This doesn’t affect the quality of the leadership but it skewed the stories that were covered. The issues at times read more like the target voters are an exclusive club of members. At the same time, the real-life concerns of the working-class electorate go under-reported or misunderstood, whether in small towns or poorer neighbourhoods in the cities or bigger towns.

For working-class voters, the issues covered do not appeal to them. Their concerns are always bread and butter issues.

Presently, the power struggle between PH and the Umno-led BN revolves around contests of short-term populism, misinformation campaigns and rhetorical prowess. Under these circumstances the open path to the big-tent approach will become redundant.

Only DAP appears to be actively recruiting as many electable candidates as possible and actively calling for building a big enough coalition of relatively like-minded individuals and parties to win the next general election and govern with an effective majority.

For all their differences, DAP is hoping every politician in the opposition and possibly some in the ruling coalition will have a common aim to move the country in the same direction. They want to defeat BN and stop the return of the court cluster into the government.

Crafting a platform that appeals to all politicians in the opposition is presently mission impossible.

By inviting “everyone” into the bloc and continuing with their endorsement of their previous prime minister candidate, DAP is making one clear choice: a choice not to alienate his loyal base of voters. – April 25, 2022.

* FLK reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.