KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 — Pakatan Harapan (PH) must make decisions as a coalition so that it can avoid mistakes such as fielding “political frogs”, which cost it Melaka in the just-ended state election, DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang said today.

The Iskandar Puteri MP stressed that PH must avoid becoming a “hegemony-based coalition”, and should maintain its moral high-ground by having integrity and putting the interests of the public first.

“The coalition mindset can only be developed under the PH coalition and not the hegemony-based coalition of the Barisan Nasional (BN).

“Pakatan Harapan should also accept a unanimity rule for decision-making by its presidential council.

“Such a rule would avoid the PH blunder like accepting ‘political frogs’, which was decisively rejected in the Malacca general election,” he said in a statement.

In the recent election, DAP’s PH ally PKR took in two of the four assemblymen who pulled their support for Datuk Seri Sulaiman Md Ali and caused the Umno-led state government’s collapse.

The duo, Datuk Seri Idris Haron and Datuk Nor Azman Hassan, were sacked from Umno after that decision and ran in the state election under the PH banner, as announced by Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim in a November 6 press conference that saw no DAP representative present.

However, Lim said that it would be counter-productive to place the full blame for that decision on PH chairman Anwar.

He also said that the Melaka poll results were not a sign of Umno’s return to political dominance.

“This is not the case as can be seen by the votes secured by the three coalitions from the total votes cast — BN 38.39 per cent or 122,741 votes; Pakatan Harapan 35.65 per cent or 113.968 votes; Perikatan Nasional 24.47 per cent or 78,220 votes,” he said.

The Melaka state election last Saturday saw PH winning only five of the all 28 seats contested. Of these, four were won by DAP candidates and one by Amanah, which fielded eight and nine respectively.

PKR, which is led by Anwar, lost in all 11 seats it contested.

This was a stark drop in performance, compared to the 2018 general election, where PH won 15 seats in the state, with three of those by PKR candidates.