MCA president Liow Tiong Lai said last night that Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia’s plan to join the Pakatan Harapan alliance would only be a marriage of convenience solely for the next general election.

“They will go separate ways after the election,” he told reporters after the MCA’s annual conference. “The people know who Mahathir is. He has a personal agenda.”

Supporters of prime minister Najib Razak have accused Mahathir, an Umno president for 22 years, of wanting to have his son Mukhriz become prime minister in order to secure the interests of his family and his supporters.

Dr Mahathir and ousted Umno deputy president Muhyiddin Yassin founded PPBM in September as part of their campaign to remove Najib from office. Dr Mahathir has called for a united front of opposition parties in order to defeat the Barisan Nasional at the next general election.

However Barisan Nasional strategist Abdul Rahman Dahlan saw no future for an expanded Pakatan Harapan.

“Good luck to them. It’s okay [whether] they want to be together or not. We will work much harder,” he said last night. “They will not last, this is my prediction. They will soon break up as they have very different principles and views from each other.”

He said that even if Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia joined PKR, the DAP and Parti Amanah Negara in the Pakatan, the four-party alliance would struggle to function as a single party because of their differences.

“All of them have their own agenda. They have no integrity or principles. They all talked bad about each other and now they sit with each other,” he said.

He said the only unifying factor was their hatred of Umno. “That is not a good enough reason for them to convince the people. They have not showed anything proper for the people to believe in them. I have not seen a single policy that is valid that has been articulated by that coalition,” he was quoted as saying.

Abdul Rahman, a cabinet minister and MP for Kota Belud, is the Barisan Nasional’s director of strategic communications.