Howard Lee, the outgoing Pakatan Harapan (PH) Youth chief, said PH and PN “are not, and are unlikely to become like-minded”.

For one, PN is not an opposition party but one in government, and had once betrayed the electorate’s mandate, he said, referring to the Sheraton Move in February 2020 which led to the collapse of the PH government.

“This thesis of a united opposition that includes PN holds no water until and unless PN withdraws from government, resigns all its ministerships, or gets kicked out by Barisan Nasional from their parliamentary support base,” he said in a statement.

Yesterday, in a joint statement, six Amanah Youth chiefs called for PH to work with PN – and other like-minded parties including Pejuang and Muda – for GE15, following the coalition’s “humbling defeat” at the recent Johor polls.

Lee also challenged Amanah, asking if they were willing to negotiate with PAS in a prospective electoral pact under a “larger tent of a united opposition”.

“How do we reconcile our policy and ideological contradictions with the likes of PAS, which is the backbone of PN’s machinery on the ground?”

Lee said that if PH were to explore any form of arrangement to purely eliminate a common enemy, how certain “are we that PN’s ‘divorce of convenience’ with Umno in the Melaka and Johor state elections is not as disingenuous”.

“After all, the two Malay parties were still very much intact at the federal government,” he added.

Lee then hit back at the six Amanah Youth chiefs, for demanding heads to roll following a series of electoral defeats suffered by PH.

“I respectfully suggest that calls for responsibility, as well as the rolling of heads, to be taken back to their own party.”