COMMENT | Hidden blessings of the Sheraton Move

COMMENT | It’s awful to say this, but if Pakatan Harapan wins in GE15, it could be because of the Sheraton Move.

Like many Malaysians, I could not forget the night of Feb 23, 2020 as I saw MPs entering Sheraton Hotel smiling and waving as they completed the final plot to overthrow a democratically elected Harapan government through mass defections.

The protracted week of negotiations, backstabbing, lying, crying, horse-trading, and interviewing that led to an entirely new government left a permanent scar on my psyche.

I could not see the Sheraton Move as anything else than what it was – treachery of the highest order by a group of dishonest and self-interested politicians.

But I saw a graph two weeks ago that made me ask an uncomfortable question: Could the Sheraton Move have been a good thing for the primary victim, Harapan?

Independent pollster Merdeka Center had been tracking government approval ratings with sufficient one- to three-month intervals since Harapan first came to power in 2018. This meant that we could compare how people felt about the three governments of Harapan, Perikatan Nasional (PN), and BN in the past four...