DAP leaders and supporters should be feeling smug, and even smirk, at the way Umno president Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi is bending backwards to justify the party’s joining forces with the former in the current post-electoral pact.

After all, just over a month ago, Zahid and Umno were hellbent in opposing the DAP in the campaign in the run up to the 15th general election.

In fact, Zahid and Umno went into the polls with almost one solitary purpose – of ensuring Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the DAP not getting anywhere near the nation’s helm – simply framed in the clarion call of “No Anwar, No DAP.”

Now that he is the Deputy Prime Minister, in no small ways by courtesy of the DAP, he sings a new tune and blames former Umno president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad of 22 years of indoctrinating party members into hating the DAP.

It doesn’t need a cynic to see how shallow the reason that was given. If anything, it only re-affirms opinions that never gave much to the giver’s thoughts process.

Justifiably so. It had been almost two decades since Dr Mahathir left Umno in 2003.

Since then, there had been three Umno Prime Ministers and three Umno presidents, of which only two were the PMs. Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri and Zahid were the exceptions to what used to be accepted almost as a convention in the past.

Regardless, all the three Umno Presidents and PMs relations with Dr Mahathir were anything but cordial. If fact, they were intensely hostile towards him and he was in return highly critical.

Apart from perpetually attempting to deny his contributions, these leaders made a career in demonising Dr Mahathir whenever he expressed his displeasure for the way they ran the office or when he exposed them of their excesses.

As for Zahid, he had and is still holding high office in Umno and that even at the time Dr Mahathir was the PM and Umno president.

He was acting Umno Deputy President from 2015 to 2018 and has been Umno president since then.

In other words, for the past 20 years in the absence of Dr Mahathir in Umno, of which seven years were when Zahid was occupying the party’s top two posts and until the very day of polling for the 15th general election, Zahid was incapable of shedding Dr Mahathir’s indoctrination for Umno to hate the DAP.

And it took him less than a month to be near the DAP and he saw the light.

It is indeed an amazing feat, an epiphany no less.

On the flip side, the feat is no less impressive on the part of the DAP.

For years, since the first major split in Umno in the late 1980s, the DAP had always been there for Umno leaders that left the party.

First, it was Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and his Team B who had a fallout with Dr Mahathir’s Team A leading to the former forming Semangat 46. The DAP readily accepted Tengku Razaleigh and agreed to him leading their Gagasan Rakyat and named as PM-elect in the 1990 polls.

Tengku Razaleigh was never a fan of DAP when he was in Umno and the feeling was obviously mutual.

That relationship ended when Semangat 46 got too close to PAS which to the DAP then was taboo to be associated in any form even when indirectly through Semangat 46.

And when Tengku Razaleigh returned to Umno and disbanded Semangat 46, his affinity towards the DAP took a major dip.

Then came Anwar’s sacking and his reformasi movement, the DAP joined them and his sympathisers and he was accepted as the leader and again, the PM candidate if they won.

Anwar was not a fan of the DAP and vice-versa.

Ironically, Anwar’s fall from grace over accusations of his sexual misdemeanour was a DAP’s original.

Long before the issue was made public by Umno, the DAP had gone public first about it and in fact demanded the Umno leadership to punish Anwar for it.

And when the Umno leadership did, the DAP was in the forefront to oppose it.

There was of course PAS and they consummated their marriage since the heady days of reformasi and it went on to the formation of Pakatan Rakyat which in 2008 won five states and the popular votes and denying Umno/Barisan Nasional its two-thirds majority.

The DAP, whether it accepts it or not, had helped mainstream PAS which prior to that was always confined to the east coast.

As pointed out before, the Abdul Hadi Awang that Lim Kit Siang public hug is no different than the Hadi of the 1980s and his damning decree of Umno; or the Hadi of 1999 who imposed his Islamic administration on Terengganu; or the Hadi of 2022 who led PAS into the unprecedented electoral victory and the biggest winner as a single party.

Of course, with that, the hugged Hadi is today feared and treated as the new anti-matter to DAP’s raison-d’etre.

The DAP’s take on the present PAS is as Islamophobic as it comes if past relations were taken into context.     

Then there was Dr Mahathir himself who decided to take on then Umno president and Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for the 1MDB involvement.

The DAP joined him and continued to be with him when he proposed the formation of Pakatan Harapan and setting up the Malay-based Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) to be one of the components.

It was the heady day when Malaysians from all walks of life saw the 1MDB scandal as a monstrosity and everyone, but everyone, seemed prepared to cast aside their hostilities in slaying the common enemy.

And slay the monster they did.

That relationship too didn’t last and despite the less acrimonious state between Dr Mahathir and the DAP, the hostilities seem to regain lost grounds of late, coincidentally when Umno is now available as the new Malay-based ally.

In many ways than not, the past years only saw Malay leaders of Umno’s splinters that got the support of the DAP, never a sitting Umno president until Zahid comes along.

That should be the jewel to the DAP’s crown that finally Umno, its long-standing political nemesis and in many ways than not, the anti-matter to everything that the DAP stands for.

These relations however have shelf life and when it ends, the cycle of hatred that turns to affinity and returns to hatred seems to be a consistent thread.

Nevertheless, the success of the DAP in saving “drowning” Umno and other Malay leaders is now legendary.

Yet, in politics, the line between saving and using is extremely fine. – pic TMR File