COMMENT | Who has the political vision in the PM sweepstakes?

COMMENT | The last few years have been years of confusion in Malaysian politics. This is strange because the results of the 14th general election (GE14) in May 2018, with Pakatan Harapan's victory over Barisan Nasional, ought to have ushered in a period of fog-dispelling clarity.

This clarity inhered in the popular perception that the country could not be run the way BN's main component, Umno, had been governing it.

A plurality of Malaysia's voters endorsed that sentiment at the ballot box, enabling the citizenry to wake up on May 10, 2018, to the expectation the morrow would usher in a raft of changes.

Essentially, these reforms would have to be to the institutional life of the country that would re-steer it towards fulfilment of the promises envisaged by the Merdeka Proclamation and the 1957 Federal Constitution.

Radical deviation from these bearings was what brought the country to the sorry pass it was before GE14. There had to be change – reformasi, as the Harapan catchphrase had it.

Though change was initiated under Harapan, it was not swift nor deep enough. This was because, in retrospect, Harapan's drum major, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, was not only a tepid believer in reform, he was its insidious subverter.

Neither the DAP, PKR nor Amanah could tug at the head honcho's sleeve to tell him he was going out of bounds...