Has hope turned into despair?

COMMENT | I’m tempted to say yes (to the question above). Or the past week’s turn of events may just fortify and mobilise the people’s determination to reclaim the mandate of GE14 and return to being governed by a reformist multi-racial administration.

But for now, grey is the skies as the eighth prime minister works on forming a "new" government under a new name. Its composition, however, will not be. It will probably reflect a pre-GE14 power structure shaped by Umno-PAS stalwarts driven by their tired old "ketuanan Melayu" (Malay supremacy) agenda.

For the angry 48 percent that voted for regime change two years ago, Perikatan Nasional (PN) will always remind them of the backroom manoeuvrings and treacheries that broke Pakatan Harapan’s back.

Who knows if PN will “save the country from the current crisis”, whichever way Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin cuts it, or whether the defectors were out to first serve themselves rather than the people? How the vanquished, led by the Mahathir-Anwar allied groups, will now reconsolidate to challenge the legitimacy of the "new" government? This we will witness with cautious optimism over the next few weeks.

Given the visceral nature of Malaysian racialised politics, who knows who and which party can...