“I think these (pressures) have been very minor. I am ready for bigger challenges.”

- Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor

COMMENT | I do not begrudge former prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin his victory lap in the recent state elections.

PAS may pull the strings but Muhyiddin is a willing puppet because if anything, he offered that olive branch to Pakatan Harapan in 2021 and was rejected simply because the then opposition smelled blood in the water and stupidly rejected the offer Tony Pua and Ong Kian Ming came up with.

That deal, if accepted, would have changed the political landscape in this country for the better.

After all, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s pandering to the conservative Malay base in this country, after all the cash handouts or proposed cash handouts, his burnishing of Islamic credentials at the expense of secularism, his expansion or proposed expansion of the role of the religious bureaucracy and his enabling of ketuanan-ism, popular Malay support still went to the coalition that does it better and with much less effort.

The problem with Anwar’s Islamisation is that it gives cover to Perikatan Nasional when they decide to do the same thing.

When PN eventually comes to power, what they will rely on is...